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COEffiiGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE INEFFABLE GLORY 
REV. EDWARD M. BOUNDS 



THE 
INEFFABLE GLORY 

THOUGHTS ON THE RESURRECTION 

BY 

Rev. EDWARD M. BOUNDS 

AUTHOR OF "PRAYER AND PRAYING MEN," "PREACHER 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

REV. HOMER W. HODGE 




NEW ^Sr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



,375 



COPYRIGHT, 1907, 
BY HOMER W. HODGE 



COPYRIGHT, 1 92 1, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



AUG 31 i92! 



FORMERLY ISSUED UNDER 
THE TITLE OF "THE RESURRECTION" 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©CI.A622600 



. 






INTRODUCTION 

The family Bible shows that the father of 
Rev. Edward M. Bounds, Thos. Jefferson 
Bounds, was born in Maryland Sept. 5th, 1801. 
His mother, Hester Ann Purnell, was born in 
Maryland. They married November 12th, 1823. 
Came to Kentucky, lived there for a few years, 
then moved to Marion County, Mo. Edward M. 
Bounds was born in Shelbyville, Mo., April the 
15th, 1835. His father, Thos. J. Bounds, died 
and was buried in Shelby County. His mother 
died in 1882, June the 7th, and was buried in 
Kirksville, Mo. 

Edward M. Bounds and his brother, Charles 
L., went to California under the lure of the gold 
discovery in 1849. Bounds was then only 14 
years old. It is said that he and his brother were 
the only two boys who went across the plains — 
and carried their religion with them. 

There were eight brothers and three sisters 
born to the family of Thos. J. Bounds, father of 
Edward M. Bounds. Edward M, studied law 
and was admitted and located in Hannibal, Mo., 



vi INTRODUCTION 

but the urgency to preach was so insistent that 
he gave up law after two years. He joined the 
Confederate Army at the opening of the war and 
was made a chaplain. 

Bishop W. F. Mallalieu, having read these 
chapters on The Resurrection, said in 1908, "I 
have recently read two books by Rev. Edward 
M. Bounds. The classical quotations at the heads 
of the chapters are more than worth the money 
asked for the books. Bounds says the resurrection 
of Jesus Christ was complete, literal, entire and 
absolute; that the resurrection of the bodies of 
the dead, whatever disposition may be made of 
them, whether buried in the sea or burned to 
ashes, will be precisely analogous to the resurrec- 
tion of the body of Jesus Christ." 

I met this great saint in May, 1905, when he 
was 70 years old. He was then writing his 
Preacher and Prayer and these "thoughts on the 
Resurrection." We shared our board and bed 
with him off and on until he died. It was worth 
much to hear him talk. He would sit for hours 
in silent meditation and prayer and then begin 
in a delightful slow, sweet way, and if we broke 
in upon him he became very intense. To under- 
stand his meaning and his earnestness at times 
was painful. He coaxed us to rise with him at 
the 4 a. m. hour and wrestle for the lost world 
and for money to publish his books. At last God 
gave him the loan of enough money to publish 



INTRODUCTION vii 

Preacher and Prayer and The Resurrection in 
1907. The two books were written (figuratively 
speaking) in his blood and saturated through 
and through with his tears. Brother Bounds took 
his edition of The Resurrection home with him 
to Washington, Georgia, and there they remained 
locked up for 12 years. He wrote me in Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., 15th Dec., 191 1, these words, "These 
books I send you as a gift are my books on The 
Resurrection. They are God's great truths and 
will serve you well and any who read to refresh 
on that vital truth. On 21st Dec, 191 1, he hav- 
ing so many of these books in his attic stored and 
no way to sell them, writes me these lines, "I 
send you via express twenty-five copies. They 
must be out preaching. They are God's truths. 
Choose your occasion and persons; give them 
away for God. I would like to see New York City 
sowed down with them." Scatter them as you 
can and more if you can and I will send them to 
you gladly. His longing soul knew the great hope 
of the Christian and he was interceding with God 
that his precious and priceless book might have 
readers for God's glory and God answered 
though ten years later, and now with a becoming 
binding and enterprising publishers one of the 
most glorious of all spiritual doctrines is opened 
and portrayed scripturally to a reading world who 
desire to read all he has ever written. 

Dr. A. F. Scofield of London, England, in 



viii INTRODUCTION 

studying the history of the Roman empire writ- 
ten by Polybius, the famed historian, discovered 
that the Roman army used three trumpet calls 
in breaking camp. First the trumpet blew loud 
and continuous for a few moments, which meant, 
"Strike your tents, pack your baggage, secure the 
animals. " The second trumpet was to assemble 
the companies, battalions, in formation and await 
the last trumpet. The last trumpet was simply 
"March" The argument would run thus : Paul 
was among Roman soldiers at different places 
and even chained to one in Rome and had no 
doubt often heard the Three Trumpets sounding 
in the years gone among the victorious legions 
of imperial Rome. Being therefore familiar with 
the sound of the trumpets and their meaning he 
utters this marvelous statement in ist Corinthians 
15:52, in reference to the resurrection (thirty- 
five years before St. John wrote the nth chapter 
of Revelations), "Behold I shew you a mystery; 
we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 
in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the 
Last Trump" The inference is that Paul made 
no reference at all to John's seventh trump in 
Revelations, but referred to the third trump of 
the Romans. If this hypothesis be true then 
we stand with those who are God's eagles. 
Having heard the first and second trump, we 
await the last command, "March," that we may 



INTRODUCTION ix 

be caught up together with them in the clouds 
to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall we ever 
be with the Lord." 

Bounds' interpretation is that Christ will come 
to be glorified in all them that believe when that 
prayer of His shall be answered, "Father, I will 
that they whom Thou hast given me, be with me 
where I am, that they may behold my glory." He 
did not believe that Christ would come to be 
glorified in only a portion of His saints and ad- 
mired only in so many of them that believe as 
have lived before the millennium, the rest to be 
brought in by degrees after Christ comes and to 
remain in the flesh as subjects of the former class. 

Thank God that Christ purchased on the cross 
virtual redemption and actual redemption. Our 
Spirits have been virtually redeemed and actually 
redeemed : while the body has been only virtually 
redeemed. Ephesians 1:14: "Which is the 
earnest of our inheritance until the redemption 
of the Purchased Possession" The purchased 
Possession is the body, it has not been actually re- 
deemed until God glorifies it at the Resurrection. 
Then "the Lord Himself will descend from 
Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the 
archangel and with the trump of God: and the 
dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which 
are alive and remain shall be caught up together 
with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the 



x INTRODUCTION 

air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 
Wherefore comfort one another with these 
words." Glory be to God, Amen. 

Homer W. Hodge. 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Prefatory 15 

II. The Diurnal and Annual Resur- 
rection ........ 17 

III. The Whole Man Immortal . 21 

IV. Christ the First Fruits of the 

Resurrection 28 

V. Death's Realms Invaded ... 35 

VI. Resurrection Power Lodged in Jesus 

Christ 40 

VII. God the Security: Resurrection 

Day Is a Pay Day 46 

VIII. "In Christ Shall All be Made 

Alive" 50 

IX. The Resurrection: The Essence of 

the Gospel 56 

X. The Judgment and the Resurrec- 
tion ......... 64 

XI. Not Another Body But the Same 

Body . 70 

XII. A Literal Resurrection : The Bible 

Teaching 75 

xi 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

XIIL 



XIV. 
XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 



Belief in the Resurrection as the 
Corner Stone of the Christian 
Dispensation 85 

Resurrection of the Body Complete 91 



Wesley's Argument for a Resurrec- 
tion and Not a Creation . 

The Christian's Body Raised Im- 
mortal and Incorruptible 



Some Bodies Will Shine 
Brightly than Others 



More 



Christ's Resurrection the Pledge 
and Symbol of Ours .... 



101 



109 



116 



121 



This Changed Body Will Never 
Know Weakness, Tears or Decay 126 

And As We Have Borne the Image 
of the Earthy, We Shall Also 
Bear the Image of the Heavenly 131 

Our Bodies Changed Instantane- 
ously at Second Coming of Christ 135 

Weariness, Waste, Weakness Here 
— Deathless Energy There . . 140 



THE INEFFABLE GLORY 



THE 

INEFFABLE GLORY 

CHAPTER I 

PREFATORY 

J hear the thunder of eternity in my ears night and 
day: "Behold He cometh with clouds and every eye shall 
see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and all kin- 
dreds of the earth shall wail on account of Him; even so, 
amen!' 

Christ is near at hand for His prayer in the 17th chap- 
ter of St. John is evidently on the eve of being answered: 
"Father I will that they whom Thou hast given me be 
with me where I am, that they may behold my glory!* 

—Rev. Homer W. Hodge. 

Besides the principles of which we consist and 
the actions which flow from us, the consideration 
of the things without us and the natural course of 
variations in the creature will render the resur- 
rection yet more highly probable. Every space 
of twenty-four hours teacheth thus much in which 
there is always a revolution amounting to a resur- 
rection. The day dies into night and is buried 
in silence and darkness; on the next morning it 
appeareth again and reviveth, opening the grave 
of darkness, rising from the dead of night. This 

15 



16 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

is a diurnal resurrection. As the day dies into 
the night, so does the summer into winter; the 
sap is said to descend into the root, and there it 
lies buried in the ground; the earth is covered 
with snow or crusted with frost, and becomes a 
general sepulcher. When the spring appeareth, 
all begin to rise; the plants and flowers peep out 
of their graves, revive, and grow and flourish. 
This is the annual resurrection. The corn by 
which we live and for want of which we perish 
with famine is, notwithstanding, cast upon the 
earth and buried in the ground with a design 
that it may be corrupted and, being corrupted, 
may revive and multiply; our bodies are fed by 
this constant experiment, and we continue this 
life by a constant succession of resurrections. 
Thus all things are repaired by corrupting, are 
preserved by perishing, and revived by dying; 
and can we think that man, the lord of all these 
things which thus die and revive for him, should 
be detained in death, never to live again? Is it 
imaginable that God should thus restore all things 
to man, and not restore man to himself? If there 
were no other consideration but the principles of 
human nature, of the liberty and remunerability 
of human actions and of the natural revolutions 
and resurrections of other creatures, it were 
abundantly sufficient to render the resurrection of 
our bodies highly probable. — Pearson on the 
Creed. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DIURNAL AND ANNUAL RESURRECTION 

Even the most illustrious [skeptic] has no better end 
than that of displaying his powers in confounding and 
darkening truth, and the happiest efforts of whose skep- 
ticism cannot be more leniently described than as brilliant 
feats of mental debauchery, 

— Sir James Mackintosh. 

The whole system of Jesus Christ is based 
on the immortality of the man. It is not the 
philosophical idea or guesses of the immortality 
of the soul, but the immortality of the man. The 
whole man, in his dual or triune nature, is to live 
forever. The spirit or higher department defies 
death; the body is to come out of the ruins and 
prison house of death and be raised to life. Man 
immortal; the whole man, soul, body, spirit, 
immortal — this is the keystone and keynote of 
the redemption by Christ. The deathless nature 
of the soul has been taught in the philosophies 
of earth, pagan and Christian, but the resurrec- 
tion of the body is distinctively a Christian 
doctrine. It belongs to the revelation of God's 
Word. It is found in the Bible, and nowhere 
else. Nature may have echoes, analogies, figures ;, 

17 



18 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

but nowhere is the doctrine fully asserted, fully 
assured, but in the Scriptures which contain the 
revealed will of God. 

This doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
is not a mere inference from Bible statement. It 
is the statement itself, the key of its arch, the 
corner stone of its foundation. It is not a rich 
afterthought of the gospel, but coordinate "Jesus 
and the resurrection" are the gospel. 

Faith can make no appeal to reason or the 
fitness of things; its appeal is to the Word of 
God, and whatever is therein revealed faith ac- 
cepts as true. Faith accepts the Bible as the 
word and will of God and rests upon its truth 
without question and without other evidence. 

Faith accepts the Word of God as indubitable 
evidence of any fact, and rejoices in the fact as 
true because God asserts it in his Word. Many 
of the facts revealed to us in the Bible receive 
the credence of our reason as fit and proper 
things. Others extend beyond the range of 
reason, and it has neither vision nor analogy to 
measure them. 

The resurrection of the human body, its com- 
ing back into life from the ravages, decay, and 
oblivion of the grave, is one of these supernatural 
facts. It has been the anxious and tearful ques- 
tion of the ages: "Can the dead live? Is there 
strength anywhere to vanquish death? Is there 
any hope of victory over the grave?" Reason 



DIURNAL AND ANNUAL RESURRECTION 19 

has neither answer to the question nor hope for 
the questioner. Analogy starts some faint light, 
but this goes out amid the increasing night of the 
tomb. 

There are but two questions to quicken and 
satisfy faith in the resurrection of the body. 
These questions are of promise and ability: Has 
God promised to raise the body from the dead? 
Is he able to perform his promise in this respect? 
The body is a distinct, a very important part of 
the man. It is the part seen, known, handled, 
described as the man, the organ, the outlet, 
through which the man comes into contact, sym- 
pathy, and action with the world around. A part, 
an all-important, indispensable part, of the man, 
the body belongs to the man, is an original, 
organic part of the man, evident and conspicuous 
— will this body rise from the dead where it has 
been laid amid tears and heart-breaking fare- 
wells? Its death is a fact distinct and clearly 
outlined. "Will it live again?" is the passionate 
question of love and longing. 

The heathen world sighed out their upbraid- 
ings, emptiness, and despair. The flowers, said 
they, died by the chill of winter, but spring's 
warm breath brings them to life again. The day 
declines into darkness and night, but rises again 
into the full day; suns set, but come again full- 
orbed out of the eclipse of their setting; moons 
wane, but wax into fullness and brightness again ; 



20 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

but their loved ones leave them, eclipsed and lost 
in the darkness of death, but no spring, no morn, 
no rising ever brings them again. 

Christianity hushes these sighs, fills this empti- 
ness, lifts this despair. She lights the darkness 
of the grave with the morning star of hope, and 
sheds the luster of the resurrection day upon the 
night of the tomb. Faith asks of unbelief, of 
doubt and despair: u Why should it be thought 
a thing incredible with you that God should raise 
the dead? Is anything too hard for God?" She 
declares: "All that sleep in their graves shall 
hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come 
forth." 

Faith puts the brightness of an immortal hope 
amid our graveyard griefs; writes on every tomb- 
stone, "I am the resurrection and the life;" calls 
aloud to every mourner, "Thy dead shall live." 
Christianity is not agnosticism, but faith, as- 
surance, knowledge; not negative, but positive. 
"I believe in the resurrection of the body," is a 
fundamental and enduring item of her creed. 

Christianity is not rationalism, but faith in 
God's revelation. A conspicuous, all-important 
item in that revelation is the resurrection of the 
body. 



CHAPTER III 

THE WHOLE MAN IMMORTAL 

Present and future are alike bound up in our belief 
of our Lord's resurrection and ascension; and dreary 
indeed must this present be, and gloomy and clouded that 
future, if our belief in our risen and ascended Lord be 
uncertain, partial, precarious. — Bishop Ellicott. 

To the front, as the solid foundation for the 
resurrection of the body, is the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ His resurrection opens the doors 
of the grave and lets in light and creates hope. 
"Go tell his disciples that he is risen." This 
angel announcement carries assurance and bright- 
ness to all earth's realms of doubt and death. 

"The resurrection of Christ is the cause of our 
resurrection," as Pearson on the Creed says, 
"by a double causality as an efficient and an ex- 
emplary cause— as an efficient cause in regard 
that our Saviour by and upon his resurrection 
hath obtained power and right to raise all the 
dead, Tor as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive ;' as an exemplary cause in 
regard that ail the saints of God shall rise after 

21 



22 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

the similitude and in conformity to the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, 'For if we have been planted 
together in the likeness of his death, we shall 
be also in the likeness of his resurrection.' He 
shall change our vile bodies that they may be 
fashioned like unto his glorious body. As we 
have borne the image of the earthy, we may bear 
the image of the heavenly. This is the great hope 
of the Christian that Christ rising from the dead 
hath obtained the power and is become the pat- 
tern of his resurrection. " Thy dead shall live; 
my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, 
ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew 
of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth her dead. 
The Scriptures link these two facts together, 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead 
and the resurrection of man's body from the 
grave. The dire results of his failing to rise, the 
gloom and wreck of an unrisen Christ is not too 
strongly put by an inspired writer: "Now if 
Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, 
how say some among you that there is no resur- 
rection of the dead? But if there be no resurrec- 
tion of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if 
Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, 
and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are 
found false witnesses of God; because we have 
testified of God that he raised up Christ : whom 
he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not 
For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; 



THE WHOLE MAN IMMORTAL 23 

and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; 
ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which 
are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this 
life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men 
most miserable. But now is Christ risen from 
the dead, and become the first fruits of them that 
slept. For since by man came death, by man 
came also the resurrection of the dead. For as 
in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be 
made alive. But every man in his own order: 
Christ the first fruits; afterwards they that are 
Christ's at his coming." 

Paul puts it strongly again: "For if we believe 
that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also 
that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. But 
if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the 
dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies 
by his spirit that dwelleth in you. And God hath 
both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us 
by his own power. Knowing that he which raised 
up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, 
and shall present us with you." 

The Scriptures bear ample and continuous 
evidence that the faith of the resurrection of the 
body lies in the faith that Jesus Christ died and 
rose again. If his flesh rotted in the sepulcher 
of Joseph, then our hope of coming out of the 
grave rots also; if his body went to the dust 
of Palestine, then our faith, fancied faith and 



24 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

vaunted hope, of the resurrection is as pulseless 
and dead as dust. 

All the simple and invincible proofs of the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ are confirmations 
deep, true, eternal as Holy Writ that our bodies, 
at the call of Jesus Christ, shall roll off the re- 
proach and break the iron chains of death. 

The resurrection of Jesus is the great affirming 
and cementing fact. By it he was declared to 
be the Son of God with power; it is the fitting 
and necessary complement to his advent and 
crucifixion; it binds into a complete whole all the 
facts of his wondrous life and puts the seal of 
truth on them; the keystone of the sacred arch, 
the crown of the system, the miracle of all 
miracles. It saves his crucifixion from scorn. It 
puts divinity and glory on the cross. The resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ was necessary to establish 
the truth of his mission and put the stamp of 
all-conquering power on his gospel. His death 
met the law, conciliated divine justice; his resur- 
rection sent the proclamation of liberty through 
all the realms of the dead and led the conqueror 
Death in chains. 

The most casual reader of the New Testament 
can scarcely fail to see the commanding position 
the resurrection of Christ holds in Christianity. 
It is the creator of its new and brighter hopes, 
of its richer and stronger faith, of its deeper and 
more exalted experience. It is the salient point 



THE WHOLE MAN IMMORTAL 25 

of New Testament preaching. "Jesus and the 
resurrection" summarized the subject of their 
sermonizing. Without this to them there was 
nothing but gloom and despair. If Christ, says 
the apostle, be not risen, then is our preaching 
vain, our faith vain, we are perjured as false 
witnesses for God, we are yet in our sins, our 
dead in Christ have perished hopelessly, and we 
are of all men most miserable. All these dire 
results are predicated of us if Christ be not risen. 
But the apostle arrests all these appalling conse- 
quences, and throws a flood of light and hope and 
life over the scene by this restatement and reas- 
surance : "But now is Christ risen from the dead, 
and become the first fruits of them that slept.'' 
The resurrection of Christ reanimates our hopes 
of heaven and fixes them as sure as its foundations 
of adamant, and as precious and beautiful as its 
jeweled walls. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the birth 
of a new, glorious, immortal life on the realms 
of the midnight of death, the rising of the new 
sun on the terrors of darkness and night. It is 
the opening of a bright and noble highway to 
heaven where everything had been closed and 
sealed and every hope withered. Peter's raptur- 
ous acclaim is not the transport of impulse, but 
it is born of the most glorious and divine fact — a 
fact as solid and enduring as the granite of 



26 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

heaven, as enrapturing as the bliss and beauty of 
heaven. 

The resurrection of Christ not only lifts dark- 
ness and dread from the tomb, but also spans the 
abyss which separates us from our loved dead, 
and puts into us the strength and hope of a 
glorious reunion in the very face of a separation ' 
the most painful, disastrous, and despairing. 

The resurrection of Jesus both assures and 
patterns our resurrection; the two are conjoined. 
The nonresurrection of the body relegates Jesus 
back to his grave, and seals it as forever dead. 
Peter's triumphant shout plants the flower of 
immortality and life on every tombstone where 
faith had wrought its wondrous work. 

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy 
begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an 
inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that 
f adeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who 
by the power of God are guarded through faith 
unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last 
time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice. " 

Hope throws its rich luster over the night of 
the tomb and thrills with deathless joy the heart 
where the resurrection of Jesus has been realized. 
We are to come out of the grave because Jesus 
came out of his grave. Our tombs will f be empty 
of our bodies because Joseph's new tomb on the 



THE WHOLE MAN IMMORTAL 27 

third morn was empty of his body. There is an 
inevitable, insuperable connection between the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection 
of our bodies. 

The resurrection of Christ is the assurance and 
type of ours — his body which died, the same and 
not another, was raised. These bodies we now 
bear, the same ones we shall put in the grave, 
will be raised and fashioned after his glorious 
body. His resurrection takes the tyranny and 
sting from death, destroys its fears and van- 
quishes its dominion, brings the angels down 
beside our grave, plants hope and immortality on 
the ruins of that grave. His resurrection con- 
quers for us a way through the dark domain of 
death; by it corruption puts on incorruption, 
mortality puts on immortality. Death is swal- 
lowed up, the victor's song is on our dying lips, 
and death becomes our coronation day. 



CHAPTER IV 

CHRIST THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE RESURRECTION 

Never was there an age when it was more necessary to 
set forth events that not only imply but practically prove 
the resurrection of the body, and that not only suggest 
but confirm the teaching of the Church in reference to 
the future state which it is the obvious tendency of the 
speculations of our own times to explain away, to modify, 
or to deny. — Bishop Ellicott. 

In the person of Jesus, his acts and teachings, 
death holds an essential, conspicuous place. It 
could not be otherwise. Death holds a com- 
manding and ruinous reign over the race which 
Jesus Christ came to redeem. There could be 
no redemption of man without an invasion of 
the realms of death. No sunlight to humanity 
while the clouds and night of death hung heavy 
and dread, no spring bloom to man while the 
winter of death swept and froze with its polar 
blasts and killing frosts. The Emancipator must 
break the thrall which holds, throttles, and en- 
slaves. Of his coming and of himself the long- 
away prophet had declared: "I will ransom 
them from the power of the grave : I will redeem 

28 



CHRIST THE FIRST FRUITS 29 

them from death : O death, I will be thy plagues ; 
O grave, I will be thy destruction." An age 
frivolous, recklessly treading on the verge of 
agnosticism and suicide, may reck nothing of 
death, its mystery and fear; but a serious age 
will open its eye and seriously and prayerfully 
confront death, recognize and lament its reign 
and ruin, as the king of terrors, the woe and 
blight of earth. Jesus Christ came to confront 
death, to war on death, to dismantle its empire, 
to discrown its king until every one of Christ's 
imprisoned ones shall shout: "Death is swal- 
lowed up in victory. O death, where is thy 
sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 

Jesus holds in his own person the death of 
death. He boldly declares: "If a man keep my 
saying, he shall never taste of death." He said 
in the presence of a death whose ruthless ravages 
had desolated his friendliest home and filled with 
bitterest grief his most devoted hearts: "I am 
the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth 
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and 
whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
die." He attested the wealth and glory of his 
triumph over death: "I am the first and the 
last, and the living one; and I was dead, and 
behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the 
keys of death and of Hades." 

What does Jesus, the great Teacher sent by God 
to teach us the great things of God, say about 



30 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

the rising again of the body from death? In 
raising the dead does he not in action and in plain, 
unmistakable fact declare his ability to raise the 
dead and intimate the possibility and encourage 
the hope of the resurrection? u And it came to 
pass the day after, that he went into a city called 
Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, 
and much people. Now when he came nigh to the 
gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man 
carried out, the only son of his mother, and she 
was a widow: and much people of the city was 
with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had 
compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. 
And he came and touched the bier: and they that 
bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, 
I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead 
sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered 
him to his mother. And there came a fear on all : 
and they glorified God, saying, That a great 
prophet is risen up among us ; and, That God hath 
visited his people. " 

Is there not in this picture the doctrine of the 
resurrection of the dead? Is it not a prophecy 
and, even more, a pledge that death in all its 
forms shall be conquered? Shall he live and 
death reign? Does not this great miracle raise 
hope in him as the Lord of death? Can we not 
say, looking with wonderment on this display of 
the power of Jesus: "My flesh shall rest in 
hope?" 



CHRIST THE FIRST FRUITS 31 

On his way to Jairus's house to heal his daugh- 
ter, and while pausing to cure the woman with 
the issue of blood: "While he yet spake, there 
came from the ruler of the synagogue's house 
certain which said, Thy daughter is dead; why 
troublest thou the Master any further? As soon 
as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he said 
unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, 
only believe. And he suffered no man to follow 
him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother 
of James. And he cometh to the house of the 
ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and 
them that wept and wailed greatly. And when 
he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make 
ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, 
but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. 
But when he had put them all out, he taketh the 
father and the mother of the damsel, and them 
that were with him, and entereth in where the 
damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by 
the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi ; which 
is, being interpreted, Damsel, (I say unto thee,) 
arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and 
walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. 
And they were astonished with a great astonish- 
ment. And he charged them straitly that no man 
should know it; and commanded that something 
should be given her to eat." 

Another proof is this of his mastery over death 
that he has the keys of death and the fact that 



32 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

man's best friend has the power over man's 
greatest foe. It has that in it which gives hope 
over death, which does so readily yield to the 
power of Christ. 

The other record of raising the dead is that of 
Lazarus. This is the crown of his miracles. 
Martha averred her belief in the fact of the 
general resurrection of the dead. "I know, said 
Martha, that he shall rise again in the resur- 
rection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I 
am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth 
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die." Do not these words coupled with 
the action of Jesus give strong intimations and a 
well-grounded hope that Jesus will break the rule 
of death and bring light and immortality to light 
out of the midnight of the tomb? u And Jesus 
lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee 
that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou 
hearest me always; but because of the people 
which stand by I said it, that they may believe 
that thou hast sent me. And when he had thus 
spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come 
forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound 
hand and foot with graveclothes : and his face 
was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith to 
them, Loose him, and let him go." How many 
others were raised from the dead is not recorded^ 



CHRIST THE FIRST FRUITS 33 

It seems an incident of common observation and 
the attestation of the divinity of his mission. 

The raising from the dead of these persons is 
not only an attestation of the divinity of his 
mission, but we repeat that they are prophetical 
and proclamatory to the race of their emancipa- 
tion from their fierce and relentless foe — death. 

In addition to these acts which heralded the 
release of all incarcerated in the prison house of 
death, Jesus taught in express language the resur- 
rection of the dead. His attitude toward death 
was one of dire and eternal opposition. He came 
as the representative of life and life-giving; that 
man might have life and have it more abundantly 
— a life unshadowed by death, and to which death 
was a stranger. In contrast and opposition to 
Adam, he was a life-giving Spirit. "Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall 
never see death." Again we refer to those won- 
derful words used in the presence of death, and 
in view of its iron rule, and while the tears of 
sympathy and indignation were still wet upon his 
cheeks he declared: "I am the resurrection and 
the life : he that believeth on me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and 
believeth in me shall never die." These words 
find their highest and broadest truth : that in his 
very person there were forces and principles 
inimical and destructive to death; that, as he 
lived, death must die. The saying of Paul is but 



34 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

a condensed summary of this great purpose. 
"The appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who 
hath abolished death, and hath brought life and 
immortality to light." The Epistle to the 
Hebrews asserts the same great truth: that in 
Jesus Christ, his person and his work, were lodged 
the mighty forces which were to bring universal 
freedom from death. "Forasmuch then as the 
children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also 
himself likewise took part of the same; that 
through death he might destroy him that had the 
power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver 
them who through fear of death were all their 
lifetime subject to bondage." 



CHAPTER V 

death's realms invaded 

J am not so ignorant of the temper and tendency of the 
age in which I live as either to be unprepared for the sort 
of remarks which the literal interpretation of the Evan- 
gelist will call, or to attempt an answer to them. Vision- 
ary ravings, obsolete whimsies, transcendental trash, and 
the like I leave to pass. — S. T. Coleridge. 

The attitude of Jesus Christ to the doctrine 
of the resurrection of the dead is one of familiar- 
ity and matter of course. In the sixth chapter 
of John with what an emphatic, authoritative 
manner he deals with it as a generally acknowl- 
edged, great basic fact ! "For I came down from 
heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of 
him that sent me. And this is the Father's will 
which hath sent me, that of all which he hath 
given me I should lose nothing, but should raise 
it up again at the last day." 

This resurrection he puts as the declared pur- 
pose and will of God, that he should raise them 
up at the last day. This was imperative if he 
accomplishes God's design. The capsheaf of 
God's purposes for Jesus Christ was that he 

35 



36 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

should raise the dead. Again he returns to this 
great thought, purpose, and fact: "And this is 
the will of him that sent me, that every one which 
seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have 
everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the 
last day." 

Again he iterates the fact, and declares that 
he is committed to it. The Father commits it to 
him. The resurrection power is lodged in Jesus. 
"No man can come to me, except the Father 
which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise 
him up at the last day." Again Jesus gives ut- 
terance to the important statement: "Whoso 
eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath 
eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last 
day." 

Death and him that had the power of death 
— that is, the devil — against these, the author of 
evil and his works, Jesus Christ set himself. He 
declared himself to be the resurrection and the 
life, that death in every form, in every way, and 
at every place, must yield to him. We stress and 
iterate the fact that he is life. "If a man keep 
my saying, he shall never see death." "Whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
die." "He that believeth in me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live." "I am the first and the 
last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and 
behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the 
keys of death and of Hades." "I am come that 



DEATH'S REALMS INVADED 37 

they might have life, and have it more abund- 
antly." Life against death is he. Jesus Christ, 
the source of all deathless energy, by absolute 
and eternal fitness, by a matter of course, and by 
character he is the foe, the destruction of death. 
He is coequal, coeternal with the Father, and 
pours the Father's full tide of life on the world. 
"For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth 
him all things that himself doeth: and he will 
show him greater works than these, that ye may 
marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, 
and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth 
whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, 
but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth 
my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath 
everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
demnation; but is passed from death unto life. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is com- 
ing, and now is, when the dead shall hear the 
voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall 
live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so 
hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; 
And hath given him authority to execute judg- 
ment also, because he is the Son of man." 

"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, 
in the which all that are in the tombs shall hear 
his voice, and shall come forth: they that have 
done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they 
that have done ill, unto the resurrection of judg- 



38 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

merit." He had made strong declarations of life> 
eternal life, and of a spiritual resurrection; seeing 
their wonderment, he goes on to declare a greater 
marvel still — the resurrection of the body from 
the grave as the inevitable sequence of the life 
in his Father and in himself. All shall come forth 
— death shall yield its hold, and the grave deliver 
its prisoners long held. All shall come forth — 
not a body left — not an atom of the grave's dust 
but shall have the touch and taste of the resur- 
rection life. Jesus Christ tells his disciples that 
when he comes in the glory of his Father with 
the holy angels he will reward every man accord- 
ing to his works. To secure this end, the resur- 
rection is a necessity. 

The transfiguration of Jesus is one of the 
typical facts of the resurrection of the body; not 
only of the glorious change, but of the renewed 
life of the body and of the general judgment day. 
The presence of Moses and Elijah there are the 
trophies as they appear in glory of the resurrec- 
tion power of Christ. It is a distinct prophecy 
and foreshadowing of the coming of the body out 
of the power and ravages of death. Moses and 
Elijah appear at this hour as the first fruits of 
the resurrection glory. It is worthy of remark 
that it is here as well as in the continuous ministry 
of Christ that the body, this body of our humilia- 
tion, has its sign and pledge of its future glory. 

"I will raise him up at the last day." These 



DEATH'S REALMS INVADED 39 

iterated words deserve great and grave con- 
sideration—there is to be a day, a great day, 
a tremendous day; the last day, the closing of 
this world's history. Time shall be no more. 
Eternity, changeless eternity, will begin its new 
history for man. Paul calls it "the day of wrath 
and revelation of the righteous judgment of 
God;" the day when "the dead, small and great, 
shall stand before God." The raised dead — 
raised from their sleep in proud city cemetery or 
the silent forsakenness of the unmarked loneliness 
of the country sleeper; from the ocean depths, 
shrouded and entombed for ages in its restless, 
defiant, fathomless caves ; from the dismal abodes 
of the Hades whose waves and fires were but 
the voices which told of deeper waves and fiercer 
fires to come. This is the day when Christ is 
committed to the raising of his dead ones, when 
his and man's last enemy, death, shall be de- 
stroyed. 

"Last day!" Day of God's glory and power! 
Day of terror and alarm to the unbelieving and 
impenitent — their eternal doom! Day of re- 
nown and victory to Jesus Christ, of infinite com- 
fort to all his saints. Infinite comfort ! Infinite 
in measure and infinite in length. This last day 
is one of God's appointed days — God's decreed 
days. 



CHAPTER VI 

RESURRECTION POWER LODGED IN JESUS CHRIST 

The power of God speaks it possible that there may be 
a resurrection; the Scriptures make it certain that there 
shall be a resurrection. — Rev. Matthew Henry. 
\ // you knew the power of God, you would know that 
He can do it; and if you knew the Scriptures, you would 
know that He will do it.— Bishop Horne. 

In the lessons that Jesus Christ taught of the 
unselfish ministries of the social life he guards 
our feasts and their guests so that there may be 
none of the pride of life in them: "Then said he 
also to him that bade him, When thou makest 
a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy 
brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neigh- 
bors; lest they also bid thee again, and a recom- 
pense be made thee. But when thou makest a 
feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the 
blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot 
recompense thee : for thou shalt be recompensed 
at the resurrection of the just." 

The resurrection of the dead was an accepted 
fact in Jewish popular teaching and credence, 
well known and constantly taught in the Pharisaic 

40 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION POWER 41 

schools of thought and doctrine, grounded on the 
teaching of the Old Testament and their schools 
of tradition and stalwart orthodoxy. In teach- 
ing, Christ accepts as true the doctrine as under- 
stood and so bases and refers the holy ministries 
of mercy and service to that great time for their 
recompense: "At the resurrection of the just." 

All the events of this life are to have their 
reference to the resurrection hour! How un- 
selfish and dignified, how full of gravity will a 
life be that shapes all its actions by the resurrec- 
tion or judgment day! u But I say unto you, 
That every idle word that men shall speak, they 
shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. 
For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by 
thy words thou shalt be condemned." "Thou 
shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the 
]ust! } Assured fact! The truth of all truths! 
Let us keep our eye on that great hour. Let us 
shape our actions by its high rules of righteous- 
ness, rectitude, truth! Let us await its awards 
with a holy, lowly, unselfish ministry to the 
afflicted and beggared ones of earth, who cannot 
recompense us — take God as their security, and 
look to the resurrection as pay day. 

The statements of Jesus are direct in regard 
to the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees, 
who did not believe in the resurrection, pro- 
pounded a question to Christ in order to confute 
the doctrine. In his reply he asserts the fact in 



42 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

opposition to the Sadducees and elevates the doc- 
trine above the low and carnal views of the 
Pharisees, and also asserts it as fundamental to 
the nature of God and as belonging to the teach- 
ings of Moses. 

"Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, 
which deny that there is any resurrection; and 
they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote 
unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, 
and he die without children, that his brother 
should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his 
brother. There were therefore seven brethren: 
and the first took a wife, and died without chil- 
dren. And the second took her to wife, and he 
died childless. And the third took her: and in 
like manner the seven also : and they left no chil- 
dren, and died. Last of all the woman died also. 
Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them 
is she? for seven had her to wife. And Jesus 
answering said unto them, The children of this 
world marry, and are given in marriage : but they 
which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that 
world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither 
marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can 
they die any more: for they are equal unto the 
angels; and are the children of God, being the 
children of the resurrection. Now that the dead 
are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when 
he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the 
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION POWER 43 

not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all 
live unto him." 

This afforded Jesus Christ a fine opportunity 
to explode the doctrine of the resurrection if not 
true; instead he relieves the doctrine of its 
Pharisaic rubbish and debauchment, declares and 
confirms it by Scripture and by the character of 
God, putting it upon its divine and spiritual basis. 

This is an important occasion. It is light on 
the doctrine of the resurrection to those who 
opposed it. Doubtless this question had often 
confused and silenced the Pharisees. The Sad- 
ducees denied the resurrection — angel and spirit. 
Here they came saying there was no resurrection, 
maintaining this against our Lord. He answers : 
"Ye do not understand the Scriptures which imply 
the resurrection, nor the power of God before 
which all these obstacles vanish." Our Lord as- 
serts here against the Sadducees the existence of 
angels and reveals to us the similarity of our 
future glorified state to their present one. The 
books of Moses were the great and ultimate 
appeal for all doctrine. The assertion of the 
resurrection comes from the very books from 
which their objections had been constructed. Our 
Lord here speaks of the conscious intent of God 
in speaking the words. God uttered these words 
to Moses in the consciousness of the still endur- 
ing existence of his peculiar relation to Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus declares that they still 



44 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

live. It is an assertion which could not be made 
of an annihilated being of the past. Weighty 
testimony against the so-called sleep of the soul 
in the intermediate state. The burden of the law, 
"I am the Lord thy God," contains in it the seed 
of immortality and the hope of the resurrection. 

For the present state of men marriage is an 
ordained and natural state of things. They who 
are worthy to obtain the resurrection life are no 
longer under the ordinance of marriage, for 
neither can they die any more. They will have 
no need of a succession and renewal; they are 
alive for evermore. They are by their resurrec- 
tion essentially partakers of the divine nature, 
and can die no more. It is a covenant relation 
on which the matter rests. In regard to him who 
inhabiteth eternity, the being of all is a living one 
in all its changes. (Alford's "Commentary on 
Matthew and Luke.") 

How clearly, distinctly, sublimely our Lord 
declares the resurrection of the body from God's 
relation to his covenant patriarchs, as shown in 
the call of Moses for their deliverance from an 
enslavement as dark, as terrible, and as hopeless 
as death ! Their deliverance from the death and 
slavery of Egypt was to be a type and prophecy 
of the glory of the resurrection from the domin- 
ion and tyranny of death. 

Our Lord on this occasion, answering the ques- 
tioning of the Sadducees, puts them to silence; 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION POWER 45 

but beyond this he draws the sublimest lesson 
about the great doctrine of the resurrection of 
the body, from the call of Moses, and unfolds the 
truth free from the stain and thralls of the flesh. 
The resurrection — heavenly life — is to be a new- 
life based on new relations. The earthly family 
institutions are not to be revived in the resurrec- 
tion life. They have their divine uses on earth, 
pass their day here, but will not have their place 
in the eternal. The angel life will be the model. 
The angels are not born into families; each one 
is separate, independent. So will be our future, 
individualized and immortal. No marriage there 
— marriage, the basis of earthly relations, the 
prime factor in earthly good, will not be there. 
No death — the source of deepest woe and pain 
will not be there. Marriage and death are 
earthly and not heavenly — belong to earth and 
not to heaven. 



CHAPTER VII 

GOD THE SECURITY : RESURRECTION DAY IS A PAY 

DAY 

Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than 
the following, "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, 
in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, 
and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the 
resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the 
resurrection of damnation," He had pronounced a message 
of inestimable importance and well worthy of that splen- 
did apparatus of prophecy and miracle with which His 
mission was introduced and attested — a message in which 
the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to 
their doubts and rest to their inquiries. 

— S. T. Coleridge. 

The bringing back of the dead is one of the 
great distinctive and gloriously magnificent and 
triumphant facts of the gospel — its glory, the 
crown and seal of its divinity. If the dead rise 
not, its scepter is departed, its prophecies and 
promises have failed, its luster is dimmed and 
tarnished, its melody turned to discord and shame. 
The resurrection is to the world what the minstrel 
was to Elisha. All prophecies, all visions of 
beauty, the hand of the Lord — all are in it. If 

46 



GOD THE SECURITY 47 

the dead rise not, then are we most miserable, 
tuneless, and dead — neither inspiration, vision, 
prophecy, nor God with us. This great fact is 
iterated and reiterated by new statement, by 
figure, and by type. It is the theme which checks 
the sigh, comforts the mourner, makes strong the 
weak, lights the fires of immortality and eternal 
life amid the darkness and ravages of earth's 
graveyards, spans the dark abyss of death with 
the golden bridge of an eternal reunion, spirit 
and body both in heaven. 

A simple setting will show how large a place 
the resurrection of the body had in the preaching, 
experience, hopes, and comforts of the New 
Testament Christians. 

Jesus Christ had in his person the power of 
the resurrection. He was the incarnation of the 
resurrection. Yet outside of his person there 
was the fact of the resurrection. The power in 
him, his resurrection applied, brings into life 
again all the dead. "As in Adam all die, even so 
in Christ shall all be made alive." How clear 
and strong is the statement about the Holy Spirit 
in us, whose indwelling gives to us the pledge and 
verity of the resurrection as well as the earnest 
of heaven ! "But if the Spirit of him that raised 
up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that 
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken 
your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth 
in you." 



48 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

So we come into sympathy with struggling, 
groaning, oppressed creation about us, which has 
in its very groans the prophecy of its resurrection. 
Nature in this says that the divine word is but 
a figure of us looking with oppressed and eager 
groanings to the future. u For the earnest ex- 
pectation of the creature waiteth for the mani- 
festation of the sons of God. For the creature 
was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by 
reason of him who hath subjected the same in 
hope. Because the creature itself also shall be 
delivered from the bondage of corruption into 
the glorious liberty of the children of God. For 
we know that the whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth in pain together until now. And not 
only they, but ourselves also, which have the first 
fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, 
the redemption of our body. For we are saved 
by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for 
what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 
But if we hope for that we see not, then do we 
with patience wait for it." 

This is the prophecy, poetry, and bloom of 
Christ's system. The future is its glory. The 
resurrection is the rich jewel of the gospel. The 
Holy Spirit inspires nature and fills man with 
this glorious resurrection hope. The more we 
have of the power of the Spirit's inworking, the 
deeper and stronger are the convictions of the 



GOD THE SECURITY 49 

resurrection; and the richer, sweeter, more as- 
sured the consciousness of our salvation by hope, 
the more profound the certainty of the adoption 
of these bodies into the glorious familyhood of 
the heavenly home. 

The Sadducees denied the resurrection of the 
dead. That which inflamed and grieved them 
and aroused them to unite with the enemies of 
the disciples was that the disciples taught and 
preached through Jesus the resurrection from 
the dead. Apostolic teaching and preaching 
broadened the resurrection from the personal 
resurrection of Jesus to the universal fact of the 
resurrection of the dead. As certainly as Jesus 
had been raised from the dead, so certainly would 
all the dead be raised. 



CHAPTER VIII 



"IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE" 



Skepticism inust ever be a misfortune or defect: a mis- 
fortune if there be no means of arriving at truth; a de- 
fect if, while there exists such means, we are unable or 
unwilling to use them* — Thomas Arnold. 

The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead 
was emphasized by Paul and made most conspic- 
uous as being the essence and sum of the gospel. 
In Athens- — cultured, skeptical, proud Athens — 
he declares the great fact. It brought a new life 
and a new and unknown hope to the paganized 
world: "Now while Paul waited for them at 
Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he 
saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore 
disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and 
with the devout persons, and in the market daily 
with them that met with him. Then certain 
philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, 
encountered him. And some said, What will this 
babbler say? others said, He seemeth to be a 
setter forth of strange gods : because he preached 
unto them Jesus, and the resurrection." 

Mars Hill heard the same before its august 

50 



"ALL SHALL BE MADE ALIVE" 51 

tribunal: "And the times of this ignorance God 
winked at; but now commandeth all men every- 
where to repent : because he hath appointed a day, 
in the which he will judge the world in righteous- 
ness by that man whom he hath ordained; 
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, 
in that he hath raised him from the dead. And 
when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, 
some mocked : and other said, We will hear thee 
again of this matter." 

Before the Jewish council he declared: "Of 
the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called 
in question." 

Paul's address before the Roman governor, 
Felix, was a personal defense, yet made strong 
by the doctrine of the resurrection which he de- 
clared to be his main offense. "But this I confess 
unto thee," he declares, "that after the way 
which they call heresy, so worship I the God of 
my fathers, believing all things which are written 
in the law and in the prophets: and have hope 
toward God, which they themselves also allow, 
that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, 
both of the just and unjust." 

In the same address he returns to and dwells 
on this fact of raising the dead: "Let these 
same here say, if they have found any evil doing 
in me, while I stood before the council, except 
it be for this one voice, that I cried standing 
among them, Touching the resurrection of the 



52 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

dead I am called in question by you this day." 
He asserted before Agrippa that the doctrine 
of the resurrection was the great promise of God 
to the fathers, the promise which gave hope to 
them and hope and fortitude to him; and then 
startles the Romanized Jewish judge by the ques- 
tion: "Why should it be thought a thing in- 
credible with you, that God should raise the 
dead?" 

The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead 
was everywhere preached and believed as one 
of the primary, fundamental, all-inclusive facts 
of the gospel. It comes in also incidentally as 
well as doctrinally. It comes to give largeness 
and power to experience; to give point and force 
to an exhortation or injunction. "Now the body 
is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the 
Lord for the body. And God hath both raised 
up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own 
power. Know ye not that your bodies are the 
members of Christ?" But we had the sentence 
of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in 
ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead." 
Again: "We having the same spirit of faith, 
according as it is written, I believed, and there- 
fore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore 
speak; knowing that he which raised up the Lord 
Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall 
present us with you." 

Some members of the Corinthian Church had 



"ALL SHALL BE MADE ALIVE" 53 

fallen into error about the resurrection of the 
dead. The fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians 
is devoted to the refutation of their errors and 
the statement of the doctrine. Therein the apos- 
tle views it from almost every standpoint and 
with all colors. The fact of death so universal 
and deplorable is centered in Adam; the fact of 
the resurrection, its truth, authority, and glory, 
centers in Christ : u For since by man came death, 
by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall 
all be made alive. But every man in his own 
order: Christ the first fruits; afterwards they 
that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the 
end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom 
to God, even the Father ; when he shall have put 
down all rule and all authority and power. For 
he must reign, until he hath put all enemies under 
his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed 
is death. For he hath put all things under his 
feet. But when he saith, all things are put under 
him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did 
put all things under him. And when all things 
shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also 
himself be subject unto him that put all things 
under him, that God may be all in all." 

He declares: "In a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye, at the last trump : for the trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, 
and we shall be changed. For this corruptible 



54 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

must put on incorruption, and this mortal must 
put on immortality." 

The following majestic, luminous, and com- 
forting declarations were made to the Thessalon- 
ians: "But I would not have you to be ignorant, 
brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that 
ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God 
bring with him. For this we say unto you by the 
word of the Lord, that we which are alive and 
remain unto the coming of the Lord shall in no 
wise precede them which are asleep. For the 
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a 
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with 
the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall 
rise first: then we which are alive and remain 
shall be caught up together with them in the 
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and so shall 
we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort 
one another with these words." 

What a place the resurrection of the dead had 
in apostolic preaching ! What comfort and solaces 
it had! How oft repeated to edify, refresh, 
strengthen I What a rich message it was for the 
early Church to bear and receive ! What a vol- 
ume full of inspiration and embellished to them ! 
How oft repeated ! how well assured were they of 
its truth ! It belonged to the heart of their faith; 
it burnished with a double radiance their hopes; 



"ALL SHALL BE MADE ALIVE" 55 

it made them to endure martyr fires and persecu- 
tions fiercer than martyr flames! We need to 
have these first fundamental facts put into our 
spiritual being anew like iron put into the blood 
to make it red and strong and life-giving. These 
mighty fact-forces have to us lost their energy 
and their divine magic. Our faith demands to 
be fed anew by them. They must be to us what 
they were to the apostles — the summary, subject, 
and power of our preaching. They must be to 
us the pabulum of our faith, the food of our souls, 
the nurser of a giant faith, the inspirer of giant 
praying. 

These facts must be to us what they were to 
the primitive Christians — creed, experience, serv- 
ice. They must weave our songs, fill our testi- 
mony. We must know that Jesus Christ has been 
raised from the dead, for we have been raised 
from the death of sin with him. We must know 
that our bodies shall be raised from the dead by 
his Spirit which is in us, which gives an assurance 
and foretaste of the resurrection day. 

O what a blessed hope is ours ! 

While here on earth we stay, 
We more than taste the heavenly powers, 

And antedate that day: 
We feel the resurrection near, 

Our life in Christ concealed, 
And with his glorious presence here 

Our earthen vessels filled. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE RESURRECTION : THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL 

/ am laboring, though most imperfectly, to lead them 
{my scholars) to Christ in true and devoted faith. I hold 
all the scholarship that ever man had to be infinitely 
worthless in comparison with even a very humble degree 
of spiritual advancement. — Thomas Arnold of Rugby. 

The resurrection of the body will be universal 
and personal, general and particular, of every 
one good and bad, or, in the language of the 
Bible, "a resurrection of the just and unjust." 
It will take place generally and at the last day. 
Jesus Christ is very clear in his statement as to 
the time. 

He declares his supreme loyalty to the Father, 
and avers, "I came down from heaven not to do 
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me," 
and then declares the will of his Father in regard 
to the resurrection: "And this is the Father's 
will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath 
given me I should lose nothing, but should raise 
it up again at the last day." 

With great solemnity he again declares the will 
of the Father and his own power and purpose in 

56 



THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL 57 

raising all believers from the dead "at the last 
day:" "And this is the will of him that sent me, 
and every one which seeth the Son, and believeth 
on him, may have everlasting life : and I will raise 
him up at the last day." 

He combines it with the statement of the 
Father's drawing, and the drawn ones are to be 
raised "at the last day:" "No man can come to 
me, except the Father which hath sent me draw 
him: and I will raise him up at the last day." 
And again he iterates and reasserts that the 
crowning glory is to be the resurrection at the 
last day: "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh 
my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him 
up at the last day." 

This was the accepted truth of the resurrection 
stated by Martha in her great sorrow at Laza- 
rus's death: "I know that he shall rise again in 
the resurrection at the last day." Again Jesus 
uses the statement which locates the resurrection 
and combines it with the judgment: "He that 
rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath 
one that judgeth him: the word that I have 
spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." 

These two tremendous facts — the judgment 
and the resurrection — are united in God's Word. 
They certainly have a close unity in importance, 
in event, and in bearing. Peter declared of 
Christ : "He which is charged of God to be judge 
of the quick and dead." Paul in his solemn 



58 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

charge to Timothy declares of Jesus that he 
shall judge the quick and the dead at his appear- 
ing and kingdom. Peter, in his Epistle, says: 
"Who shall give account to him that is ready to 
judge the quick and the dead." 

There can be no doubt that in the plain teach- 
ing of Jesus and his apostles these two facts, 
resurrection and judgment, are united. "Where- 
fore we labor, that, whether present or absent, 
we may be accepted of him. For we must all 
appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that 
every one may receive the things done in his body, 
according to that he hath done, whether it be 
good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of 
the Lord, we persuade men." The saints are 
specially charged and reminded that they must 
appear before the judgment seat of Christ for 
the things done in the body. In the interest of 
compassion and love, in our judgment, Paul in 
Romans interrogates and reminds Christians: 
"But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why 
dost thou set at naught thy brother? for we shall 
all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. But 
he that judgeth me is the Lord. x Wherefore judge 
nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who 
will both bring to light the hidden things of 
darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the 
heart; and then shall each man have his praise 
from God." 

To heal broken hearts, to confirm faith, to 



THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL 59 

arrest excessive mourning for our dead, Paul 
gives utterance to the Thessalonians : "But I 
would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, con- 
cerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow 
not, even as others which have no hope. For if 
we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even 
so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring 
with him. For this we say unto you by the word 
of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain 
unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent 
them which are asleep. For the Lord himself 
shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the 
voice of the archangel, and with the trump of 
God : and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then 
we which are alive and remain shall be caught up 
together with them in the clouds, to meet the 
Lord in the air : and so shall we ever be with the 
Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with 
these words." 

In the fact of a general judgment as well as in 
the coming of our Lord, the resurrection of the 
dead is held as a fact precedent and to be taken 
for granted. This is declared in the parable of 
the talents, the lord coming to reckon with his 
servants. This purpose had been declared and 
established from the first: "And Enoch also, the 
seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, 
Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of 
his saints." 

We have Christ's inimitable description of his 



60 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

coming the object in the twenty-fifth chapter of 
Matthew: "When the Son of man shall come 
in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, 
then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and 
before him shall be gathered all nations : and he 
shall separate them one from another, as a 
shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats : and 
he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the 
goats on the left." 

His dual purpose is set forth to the disquieted 
Thessalonians in strong terms, and they are urged 
to repose under the cheering fact that their 
Saviour would come again, and his coming would 
be to them the end of sorrow, of pain, and fear: 
"And to you who are troubled rest with us, when 
the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven 
with his mighty angels. In flaming fire taking 
vengeance on them that know not God, and that 
obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: 
who shall be punished with everlasting destruction 
from the presence of the Lord, and from the 
glory of his power; when he shall come to be 
glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all 
them that believe." 

"And I saw the dead, small and great, stand 
before God; and the books were opened: and 
another book was opened, which is the book of 
life : and the dead were judged out of those things 
which were written in the books, according to 
their works. And the sea gave up the dead which 



THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL 61 

were in it; and death and hell delivered up the 
dead which were in them : and they were judged 
every man according to their works. And death 
and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is 
the second death. And whosoever was not found 
written in the book of life was cast into the lake 
of fire." 

"And the times of this ignorance God winked 
at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to 
repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the 
which he will judge the world in righteousness by 
that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he 
hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath 
raised him from the dead." 

All these passages of the judgment are prom- 
ises and pledges of the resurrection of the dead. 
The Bible is explicit on the point; no vague 
analogies, no poetic dreams, but plain statement 
declaring the fact. 

The resurrection will be general, all will be 
raised at the same time, as Paul declares — a 
resurrection "both of the just and unjust." 

The resurrection is one of God's unconditional 
facts ; it will take place ail the same though never 
a man, woman, or child believe in it. In regard 
to this alarming and comforting fact, our unbelief, 
neglect, cannot make the truth of God a lie. It 
is inevitable and irresistible. God, who cannot 
lie, has promised, and Jesus has sealed the prom- 
ise by his resurrection. 



62 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

We should familiarize ourselves with the fact. 
It will nerve us for the conflict of faith, bring 
comfort to the grave bereft of all other comfort, 
give a sweet and bright hope in death which de- 
stroys every other hope. 

We are assured that these soul-cheering, faith- 
invigorating facts of the Bible are not fed upon 
as a sweet sacrament, cherished as our talisman 
against sorrow and sin. They do not enter like 
iron into our blood. Or else we would not be 
children tossed about by every wind, the prey 
of every temptation. This doctrine should be 
the joy and rejoicing of our hearts. Inspired and 
charmed by its hopes, we should be lifted above 
all weakness and defy all assaults. 

We subscribe to the creed, "I believe in the 
resurrection of the body," which was taught by 
God to Moses in the burning bush, confirmed to 
us by prophet and apostle, symbolized and as- 
sured in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We 
accept it not because we understand its method 
but because God has declared it in his Holy Word. 
To raise the dead is one of the thrilling and 
momentous objects of the coming of Jesus. The 
dead are to be raised, and Jesus Christ is coming 
to do that work; it is too important and glorious 
to be delegated to the most honored and lofty 
among angels or men. The Lord in person com- 
ing from heaven, with a shout of triumph and a 
call of authority to the heavens and to the earth. 



THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL 63 

The archangel's trump and the dead raised first 
— that is, before our Lord attends to any other 
business. The living are neither noticed nor 
crowned till the dead are awakened to share in 
their joys and honors. Locked in the embraces 
of love and reunion, we will be caught up to meet 
the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with 
the Lord ! Amen, so let it be ! 



CHAPTER X 

THE JUDGMENT AND THE RESURRECTION 

A going-down star is not annihilated, but shall appear 
again. O happy and blessed death, that golden bridge 
laid over by Christ my Lord betwixt times clay ban\ks 
and heaven s shores! 

Your sun is well turned and lozu; be nigh your lodging 
against night. We go, one by one, out of this great mar- 
ket till the town be empty and the two lodgings, heaven 
and hell, be filled. O thrice blessed are they who hold 
Christ with their tears and prayers! 

— Samuel Rutherford. 

It will be a resurrection. The same body 
which is put in the grave will come out. This is 
necessary to a resurrection. It is not an evolu- 
tion, not a new creation, but a resurrection — a 
standing out and up into life again, the same body 
in form, substance, identity. The body is a being, 
a department of man's marvelous nature. It is 
separable from the other part of man's being, 
and will be separated by death. The body, its 
identity and being, is clear, unmistakable, well- 
defined, visible to eye, sensible to touch, much 
more tangible, visible, real to us than the soul. 
When death separates the spirit from the body 

64 



JUDGMENT AND RESURRECTION 65 

and God says it shall return to dust, it will be so ; 
and when God says, the body shall come out of 
the grave, out of its dust, the same thing we put 
in the grave. 

The Word of God teaches that the same body 
which lived and died and lay in the grave will be 
raised — a literal resurrection, not a new creation, 
but a raising of the body from its grave and dust, 
an awakening from its long and undisturbed sleep. 

The power of Christ over death was declared 
in the resurrection of Lazarus and his own 
triumph over the grave. These were prophecies, 
pledges, and patterns of our coming from the 
dead; and in each instance the same body which 
went into the grave came out. It shall be so 
with us. 

The resurrection of the identical body that 
was laid in the grave is the doctrine of the Bible. 
This literal resurrection is the foundation stone 
of New Testament revelation. Nothing indicates 
our defection and driftings more than the views 
of the resurrection which are finding favor in 
high and low places among preachers, teachers, 
and people. With many, fiction and philosophy 
are substituted for the truth as it is in Jesus. We 
are inhaling our religious opinions from the 
tainted atmosphere of rationalism instead of the 
Bible. We are leaving Isaiah and David for 
Emerson or George Eliot. Robert Elsmere and 
John Ward preach to us instead of Paul and 



66 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

Peter. We have surrendered faith to philosophy, 
reduced revelation to reason, and deem ourselves 
wiser, if not better, than our fathers. We hesi- 
tate not to say that every departure in a less or 
remote degree from the orthodox doctrine that 
the resurrection is a literal raising of the body 
is a departure from the Bible and a lessening of 
the tenacity and strength of our personal faith. 

"I believe in the resurrection of the body," is 
Christendom's universal creed. The orthodox 
explanation of this item of the creed is thus 
summed up by Bishop Pearson: u We can there- 
fore not otherwise expound this article than by 
asserting that the bodies which have lived and 
died shall live again after death, and that the 
same flesh which is corrupted shall be restored. 
Whatsoever alterations shall be made shall not 
be of their nature but of their condition, not of 
their substance but of their qualities; which ex- 
plication is agreeable to the language of the 
Scripture, to the principles of religion, to the 
constant profession of the Church against the 
Origenists of old and the Socinians of late." 

The Bible statement is direct, unmistakable in 
its meaning that these same bodies which have 
been the vehicles as well as the abode of the soul, 
its partner as well as its servant, shall be raised. 
The man is as much body as soul, and the Bible 
doctrine holds to the resurrection of the body — 
this body — its identity well maintained, and its 



JUDGMENT AND RESURRECTION 67 

dust rekindled to life and beauty. This same 
body, which has shared so fully in the trials and 
sorrows of this earthly life, shall share in all the 
ultimate triumphs or sorrows of the life to come. 

In the eighth chapter of Romans we have this 
most explicit statement: "But if the spirit of 
him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in 
you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall 
also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that 
dwelleth in you." It is the mortal body, the dead 
body, which is to be quickened into life. 

In the fifth chapter of First Thessalonians we 
have a prayer which has a strong bearing on this 
point: u And the very God of peace sanctify you 
wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and 
soul and body be preserved blameless unto the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." The body is 
to be sanctified, set apart in all its uses and mem- 
bers to God, sealed as his property; and in that 
case to be preserved blameless unto the coming of 
our Lord — blameless, no cause for censure, the 
body kept pure, free from blame. 

We have the word "preserved," which means 
guarding, watching, take care of, to guard, to 
watch, to keep, as a prisoner is kept with sleepless 
vigilance. Who is to guard the spirit? God. 
Who is to guard and keep the body? God. To 
keep till the coming of Christ. God is to watch 
over the body, keep it as he keeps the spirit. So 
God will guard the body's sleeping dust till Jesus 



68 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

comes, and then bring it with him. Soul, spirit, 
body, kept by God's power till Jesus comes ! The 
common and simple meaning of Scripture is that 
the same body will be raised from the grave. 
There would be no triumphant strain, triumph 
would not be admissible, if the body was not de- 
livered from death! u O death, where is thy 
sting? O Grave, where is thy victory ?" would 
have neither fitness nor place; but how appro- 
priate the enrapturing notes of victory to a body 
laid low and humbled by the enemy death, and 
now released and all-victorious ! The rigid Bible 
and orthodox view has been almost wholly sur- 
rendered by modern theology. The following 
will perhaps show the commonly received opinion. 
It is called the modern idea: "The modern doc- 
trine repudiates this idea of a literal resurrection 
of the flesh. Yet it holds that the spirit has in 
another world some sort of organism through 
which it acts, and by which it has its connection 
with the material universe. What that organism 
is, and how it operates, no one pretends to know. 
Swedenborg held that there is in the human body 
a spiritual body, and that this spiritual organism 
rises at death, so that the soul is not yet clothed 
with an immortal tabernacle. This is one form 
of the modern doctrine of the resurrection of the 
body. In a sentence, then, the modern doctrine 
of the resurrection of the body, so far as that 
doctrine is in any form intelligently held, is that 



JUDGMENT AND RESURRECTION 69 

the spirit has in the other life a spiritual organism, 
and that this spiritual organism has some sort of 
connection, not by us understood, with the ma- 
terial organism which is possessed upon the 
earth." 



s 



CHAPTER XI 

NOT ANOTHER BODY BUT THE SAME BODY 

Upon the supposition that the living agent each man 
calls himself is a single being, it is as easy to conceive 
that we may hereafter animate these same or new bodies, 
variously modified and organized, as to conceive how we 
can animate such bodies as our present. 

— Bishop Butler. 

Church leaders whose standards of dictum 
hold to the literal resurrection have fallen in 
with this modern idea. The modern idea is es- 
sentially rational. It has no special regard for 
revelation, no great reverence for authority. The 
modern idea takes its cue from the Bible, but 
makes havoc of Bible facts and principles. It 
may range itself under the name of some great 
Bible doctrine, but it disembowels the doctrine, 
and leaves us nothing but an empty, delusive 
name. No one conversant with the trend of 
things can be ignorant of the fact that rational- 
ism, under the cover of modern ideas or thought, 
is affecting the granite foundations of God's 
truth. Doctrines which the wisdom and faith of 
the Church have reduced to axiomatic dogmas are 

70 



NOT ANOTHER BUT SAME BODY 71 

so changed by the transforming process of mod- 
ern thought that no essential part of the original 
doctrine remains. The new dress has changed 
not only the outward appearance, but the heart 
of the precious old truths is entirely changed. 
It is marvelously strange how widespread are 
false views of Christ, his atonement, the resur- 
rection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. 
These pernicious views are found in literature, 
commentary, exposition; they are clothed in such 
attractive garb and found in so many places that 
they fix themselves in thought before we are 
aware of it, and we have so little knowledge of 
the Bible that we cannot detect the counterfeit. 
It comes to pass that views always rejected by the 
great body of believers as unscriptural are re- 
ferred to without scrutiny or protest. 

It is one of the problems of this age to find out 
the process how the current of orthodoxy, puri- 
fied, deepened, and made strong by the confluent 
piety of ages, finds itself almost lost in the shal- 
lows and sands of the ancient and worst forms of 
heterodoxy. 

These modern ideas are not modern, though 
they may bear its imprint. They are almost as 
old as Christianity, and are as heterodox as they 
are old. We would not oppose them because they 
are new, nor reject them because they are hoary 
reprobates. We put no store by the modern idea. 
No special store do we put by the ancient idea. 



72 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

We do, though, put store, all the store we can 
muster, by the Bible idea. We measure all that 
is old and all that is new by that infallible stand- 
ard; and of whatever is new or whatever is old 
which does not agree with that, we say, Let it be 
accursed, and he who bids it Godspeed is partaker 
in the sin. 

Is this modern idea the Bible idea? Is it 
worthy of being put to the front of gospel state- 
ments? How vague and intangible this modern 
idea of the resurrection! How strange that rea- 
son should reject as unworthy of credence the 
Bible statement of the resurrection, and yet gulp 
down with greediness the dreamy vagaries con- 
tained in the modern idea. The Bible idea of the 
resurrection of the body is the fact of a literal 
resurrection of the body. The Bible declares that 
our bodies are parts of us, that they are included 
in the recovering scheme of grace, that they are 
partners with the spirit in its earthly course of 
faith or disobedience, and that they are to share 
in the honors or shame of the eternal future. 

The resurrection of the same bodies which we 
put in the grave is the doctrine which pervades 
the Bible through and through. All its truths 
are soaked in this great doctrine. The same body 
put in the grave is to come forth. Its weakness 
is to put on immortal energy. Its corruption is to 
put on incorruption. This comforting doctrine 
full of enrapturing, deathless hope, which has 



NOT ANOTHER BUT SAME BODY 73 

been the support of martyrs and saints, which has 
quenched for them the violence of the fiery stakes, 
which has quickened their faith, wiped away their 
tears, relieved the bitterness of death, and en- 
abled them to triumph over the grave — this doc- 
trine, which commends itself to reason as well as 
to faith, is to be relinquished for this modern idea, 
which for practical, vigorous Christian uses is as 
profitless as ".ZEsop's Fables" or the "Arabian 
Nights." 

The Bible word to assert this doctrine is "resur- 
rection," which means the rising again after a fall 
— the rising again of the thing that had fallen, 
not the rising of something else — and to this idea 
the Bible strongly and constantly holds us. 

Not only is the doctrine of the resurrection of 
the body involved in the doctrine of the general 
judgment, but the fact that it is the same body. 
A new body could not stand in the judgment, for 
it is not accountable — it is the same body that 
was a witness and a sharer in the transactions of 
life that is to be in the judgment. A new body 
would not be amenable to the judgment bar. So 
it is declared that the judgment will be of the liv- 
ing and of the dead. "And he commanded us to 
preach unto the people, and to testify that it is 
he which was ordained of God to be the judge of 
quick and dead." Paul writes to Timothy: "I 
charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the 



74 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

dead at his appearing and his kingdom." The 
dead represent the ones put in the grave. Isaiah 
preached the resurrection of the same bodies. He 
was called the evangelical prophet because he 
saw these latter-day glories and doctrines so dis- 
tinctly. He says: u Thy dead men shall live, to- 
gether with my dead body shall they rise. Awake 
and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as 
the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the 
dead." 

The dead are to live. The body only is dead; 
the body is to live. With Christ's resurrection 
as the pattern and power they are to arise. That 
which dwells in the dust is to awake and sing; the 
body only is to be resolved to dust. The body 
in the dust is the body that is raised. The earth 
shall cast out her dead. The earth holds noth- 
ing but the body; the spirit has never been im- 
prisoned by the earth nor soiled by its mold. The 
earth holds our bodies. The authority of the 
resurrection will break that hold, and these pris- 
oners of hope will come forth. 



CHAPTER XII 

A LITERAL RESURRECTION: THE BIBLE TEACHING 

We converse every day with wonders and miracles no 
less admirable than many of those points of faith which a 
naturalist will not believe. .For the footprints of Omnip- 
otence and Wisdom are in everything we see and hear: 
only here is the blindness of mankind, that he looks not 
diligently into things of ordinary occurrence, but passeth 
them over as of course. — Lord Hale. 

The resurrection of the body — of the same 
body which we put in the grave — is the corner 
stone of the whole Christian system. Against 
this doctrine the rudest assaults of unbelief have 
been aimed. Philosophy has held the doctrine up 
to scorn and contempt, as being unreasonable and 
impossible. The first departure from the Chris- 
tian faith was the denial of the resurrection. No 
one doctrine of Christ's system tests the genuine- 
ness and solidity of faith as a belief in this cardi- 
nal fact. Satan generally makes the first break in 
faith at this point. A giving way at this point 
destroys the foundations. Richard Watson, 
whose "Theological Institutes" have been the 
training school of Methodist preachers for 

75 



76 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

nearly a hundred years, deals with the resurrec- 
tion of the body after a masterly way, with the 
strength of a philosopher, the simplicity and di- 
rectness of a child's faith, unswerving loyalty to 
God's truth. He says: 

In this intermediate but felicitous and glorious 
state the disembodied spirits of the righteous will 
remain in joy and felicity with Christ until the 
general judgment, when another display of the 
gracious effects of our redemption by Christ will 
appear in the glorious resurrection of their bodies 
to an immortal life, thus distinguishing them from 
the wicked, whose resurrection will be to "shame 
and everlasting contempt," or to what may be 
emphatically termed an immortal death. 

On this subject, no point of discussion of any 
importance arises among those who admit the 
truth of Scripture, except as to the way in which 
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is to 
be understood; whether a resurrection of the sub- 
stance ot the body be meant, or of some minute 
and indestructible part of it. The latter theory 
has been adopted for the sake of avoiding certain 
supposed difficulties. It cannot, however, fail 
to strike every impartial reader of the New Testa- 
ment that the doctrine of the resurrection is there 
taught without any nice distinctions. It is always 
exhibited as a miraculous work, and represents 
the same body which is laid in the grave as the 
subject of this change from death to life by the 



A LITERAL RESURRECTION 77 

power of Christ. Thus, our Lord was raised in 
the same body in which he died, and his resur- 
rection is constantly held forth as the model of 
ours; and the apostle Paul expressly says, "Who 
shall change our vile body, that it may be fash- 
ioned like unto his glorious body." The only pas- 
sage of Scripture which appears to favor the no- 
tion of the rising of the immortal body from some 
indestructible germ is i Corinthians xv. 35: "But 
some men will say, How are the dead raised up, 
and with what body do they come? Thou fool, 
that which thou sowest is not quickened except 
it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest 
not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it 
may chance of wheat, or of some other grain." 
If, however, it had been the intention of the 
apostle, holding this view of the case, to meet 
objections to the doctrine of the resurrection, 
grounded upon the difficulties of conceiving how 
the same body, in the popular sense, could be 
raised up in substance, we might have expected 
him to correct this misapprehension, by declaring 
that this was not the Christian doctrine, but that 
some small parts of the body only, bearing as little 
proportion to the whole as the germ of a seed to 
the plant, would be preserved, and be unfolded 
into the perfected body at the resurrection. In- 
stead of this, he goes on immediately to remind 
the objector of the differences which exist between 
material bodies as they now exist: between the 



78 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

plant and the bare or naked grain; between one 
plant and another; between the flesh of men, of 
beasts, of fishes, and of birds; between celestial 
and terrestrial bodies; and between the lesser and 
greater celestial luminaries themselves. Still 
farther he proceeds to state the difference, not 
between the germ of the body to be raised and 
the body given at the resurrection, but between 
the body itself, understood popularly, which dies, 
and the body which shall be raised. "It is sown 
in corruption, it is raised in incorruption," which 
would not be true of the supposed incorruptible 
and imperishable germ of this hypothesis; and 
can be affirmed only of the body itself, considered 
in substance, and in its present state corruptible. 
Further, the question put by the objector, "How 
are the dead raised up?" does not refer to the 
modus agendi of the resurrection, or the process 
or manner in which the thing is to be effected, as 
the advocates of the germ hypothesis appear to 
assume. This is manifest from the answer of the 
apostle, who goes on immediately to state, not 
in what manner the resurrection is to be effected, 
but what shall be the state or condition of the 
resurrection body, which is no answer at all to 
the question, if it be taken in that sense. 

The first of the two questions in the passage 
referred to relates to the possibility of the resur- 
rection, "How are the dead raised up?" the sec- 
ond to the kind of body which they are to take, 



A LITERAL RESURRECTION 79 

supposing the fact to be allowed. Both questions, 
however, imply a denial of the fact, or, at least, 
express a strong doubt concerning it. It is thus 
that "how p in the first question is taken in many 
passages where it is connected with a verb; and 
the second question only expresses the general 
negation or doubt more particularly by implying 
that the objector could not conceive of any kind 
of body being restored to man which would not 
be an evil and imperfection to him. For the very 
reason why some of the Christians of that age 
denied or strongly doubted the resurrection of the 
body, explaining it figuratively and saying that it 
was past already, was, that they were influenced 
to this by the notion of their philosophical schools, 
that the body was the prison of the soul, and that 
the greatest deliverance men could experience was 
to be eternally freed from their connection with 
matter. Hence the early philosophizing sects in 
the Christian Church, the Gnostics, Marcionites, 
etc., denied the resurrection on the same ground 
as the philosophers, and thought it opposed to 
that perfection which they hoped to enjoy in an- 
other world. Such persons appear to have been 
in the Church of Corinth as early as the time of 
St. Paul, for that in this chapter he answers the 
objections not of pagans but of professing Chris- 
tians appears from verse 12: "How say some 
among you, that there is no resurrection of the 
dead?" The objection, therefore, in the minds 



80 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

of these persons to the doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion did not lie against the doctrine of the raising 
up of the substance of the same body; so that, 
provided this notion could be dispensed with, they 
were prepared to admit that a new material body 
might spring from its germ, as a plant from seed. 
They stumbled at the doctrine in every form, be- 
cause it involved the circumstance of the reunion 
of the spirit with matter, which they thought an 
evil. When, therefore, the objector asks, "How 
are the dead raised up?" he is to be understood 
not as inquiring as to the process, but as to the 
possibility. The doubt may, indeed, be taken as 
an implied negation of the possibility of the resur- 
rection with reference to God; and then the 
apostle, by referring to the springing up of the 
grain of corn when dissolved and putrified, may 
be understood to show that the event was not in- 
conceivable by referring to God's omnipotence, as 
shown in his daily providence, which, a priori, 
would appear as marvelous and incredible. But 
it is much more probable that the impossibility im- 
plied in this question refers not to the power of 
God, which every Christian in the Church of Cor- 
inth must be supposed to have been taught to 
conceive of as almighty, and therefore adequate 
to the production of this effect; but as relating to 
the contrariety which was assumed to exist be- 
tween the doctrine of the reunion of the soul with 
the body, and those hopes of a higher condition 



A LITERAL RESURRECTION 81 

in a future life, which both reason and revelation 
taught them to form. The second question, 
u With what body do they come?" like the former, 
is a question not of inquiry but of denial, or at 
least of strong doubt, importing that no idea could 
be entertained by the objector of any material 
body being made the residence of a disenthralled 
spirit which could comport with those notions of 
deliverance from the bondage of corruption by 
death which the philosophy of the age had taught 
and which Christianity itself did not discounte- 
nance. The questions, though different, come, 
therefore, nearly to the same import; and this ex- 
plains why the apostle chiefly dwells upon the 
answer to the latter only, by which, in fact, he re- 
plies to both. The grain cast into the earth even 
dies and is corrupted, and that which is sown is 
not "the body which shall be, " in form and qual- 
ity, but "naked grain"; yet into the plant, in its 
perfect form, is the same matter transformed. So 
the flesh of beasts, birds, fishes, and man is the 
same matter, though exhibiting different qualities. 
So, also, bodies celestial are of the same matter 
as "bodies terrestrial" ; and the more splendid lu- 
minaries of the heavens are, in substance, the 
same as those of inferior glory. It is thus that 
the apostle reaches his conclusion, and shows that 
the doctrine of our reunion with the body implies 
in it no imperfection — nothing contrary to the 
hopes of liberation "from the burden of this flesh" 



82 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

— because of the high and glorified qualities which 
God* is able to give to matter; of which the su- 
perior purity, splendor, and energy of some ma- 
terial things in this world, in comparison with 
others, is a visible demonstration. For after he 
has given these instances, he adds: "So is the 
resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, 
it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, 
it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is 
raised in power; it is sown a natural [an animal] 
body, it is raised a spiritual body," so called, "as 
being accommodated to a spirit, and far excelling 
all that is required for the transaction of earthly 
and terrene affairs"; and so intent is the apostle 
on dissipating all those gross representations of 
the resurrection of the body which the objectors 
had assumed as the ground of their opposition, 
and which they had probably in their disputations 
placed under the strongest views, that he guards 
the true Christian doctrine on this point in the 
most explicit manner, "Now, this I say, brethren, 
that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God, neither doth corruption inherit incorrup- 
tion"; and, therefore, let no man henceforward 
affirm or assume it in his argument that we 
teach any such doctrine. This also he strengthens 
by showing that, as to the saints who are 
alive at the second coming of Christ, they also 
shall be in like manner "changed," and that "this 



A LITERAL RESURRECTION 83 

corruptible," as to them also, "shall put on in- 
corruption." 

Thus, in the argument, the apostle confines him- 
self wholly to the possibility of the resurrection of 
the body in a refined and glorified state; but omits 
all reference to the mode in which the thing will 
be effected as being out of the line of the objector's 
questions and in itself above human thought and 
wholly miraculous. It is, however, clear that 
when he speaks of the body as the subject of this 
wondrous "change" he speaks of it popularly as 
the same body in substance, whatever changes in 
its qualities or figure may be impressed upon it. 
Great general changes it will experience, as from 
corruption to incorruption, from mortality to im- 
mortality; great changes of a particular kind will 
also take place, as its being freed from deformi- 
ties and defects, and the accidental varieties pro- 
duced by climate, ailments, labor, and hereditary 
diseases. It is also laid down by our Lord that 
"in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor 
be given in marriage, but be like to the angels of 
God" ; and this also implies a certain change of 
structure; and we may gather from the declara- 
tion of the apostle that, though "the stomach" is 
now adapted "to meats and meats to the stomach, 
God will destroy both it and them" ; that the ani- 
mal appetite for food will be removed, and the 
organ now adapted to that appetite have no place 
in the renewed frame. But great as these changes 



84 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

are, the human form will be retained in its per- 
fection, after the model of our Lord's "glorious 
body," and the substance of the matter of which 
it is composed will not thereby be affected. That 
the same body which was laid in the grave shall 
arise out of it, is the manifest doctrine of the 
Scriptures. 



CHAPTER XIII 

BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION AS THE CORNER 
STONE OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION 

The resurrection of the saints is called the manifestation 
of the sons of God, the glorious liberty of the children of 
God, the adoption, the redemption of our bodies. It is 
the grand jubilee of the Church, and even of the creation. 
Till then the former as well as the latter shall be held 
under a degree of bondage, as being yet subject to the 
effects of sin. But then Chris fs promise shall be fulfilled, 
Cf I will raise them up at the last day'* and the deliverance 
of the saints will be the signal of that of the creation. 

— Rev. Andrew Fuller. 

The notion of an incorruptible germ, or that 
of an original and unchangeable stamen, out of 
which a new and glorious body, at the resurrec- 
tion, is to spring, appears to have been borrowed 
from the speculations of some of the Jewish rab- 
bins, who speak of some such supposed part in the 
human frame under the name Luz, to which they 
ascribe marvelous properties and from which the 
body was to arise. No allusion is, however, made 
to any such opinion by the early fathers in their 
defenses of the doctrine of the resurrection from 



86 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

the dead. On the contrary, they argue in such a 
way as to prove the possibility of the reimton 
of the scattered parts of the body, which suffi- 
ciently shows that the germ theory had not been 
resorted to, by Christian divines at least, in order 
to harmonize the doctrine of the resurrection with 
philosophy. So Justin Martyr, in a fragment of 
his concerning the resurrection, expressly answers 
the objection that it is impossible for the flesh, 
after a corruption and perfect dissolution of all 
its parts, to be united together again, and con- 
tends "that if the body be not raised complete, 
with all its integral parts, it would argue a w y ant 
of power in God" ; and although some of the Jews 
adopted the notion of the germinating or spring- 
ing up of the body from some one indestructible 
part, yet the most orthodox of their rabbis con- 
tended for the resurrection of the same body. So 
Maimonides says: "Men, in the same manner as 
they before lived, with the same body, shall be 
restored to life by God, and sent into this life with 
the same identity"; and "that nothing can prop- 
erly be called a resurrection of the dead but the 
return of the very same soul into the very same 
body from which it was separated." 

This theory, under its various forms, and 
whether adopted by Jews or Christians, was de- 
signed, doubtless, to render the doctrine of a res- 
urrection from the dead less difficult to conceive, 
and more acceptable to philosophic minds; but, 



RESURRECTION, CORNER STONE 87 

like most other attempts of the same kind to bring 
down the supernatural doctrines of revelation to 
the level of our conceptions, it escapes none of the 
original difficulties and involves itself in others 
far more perplexing. 

For if by this hypothesis it was designed to re- 
move the difficulty of conceiving how the scattered 
parts of one body could be preserved from becom- 
ing integral parts of other bodies, it supposes 
that the constant care of Providence is exerted 
to maintain the incorruptibility of those individual 
germs, or stamina, so as to prevent their assimi- 
lation with each other. Now, if they have this 
by original quality, then the same quality may 
just as easily be supposed to appertain to every 
particle which composes a human body; so that, 
though it be used for food, it shall not be capable 
of assimilation, in any circumstances, with another 
human body. But if these germs, or stamina, 
have not this quality by their original nature, they 
can be prevented from assimilating with each 
other only by that operation of God which is pres- 
ent to all his works, and which must always be 
directed to secure the execution of his own ulti- 
mate designs. If this view be adopted, then, if 
the resort must at last be to the superintendence 
of a Being of infinite power and wisdom, there 
is no greater difficulty in supposing that his care 
to secure this object shall extend to a million than 
to a thousand particles of matter. This is, in 



88 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

fact, the true and rational answer to the objection 
that the same piece of matter may happen to be a 
part of two or more bodies, as in the instances of 
men feeding upon animals which have fed upon 
men, and of men feeding upon one another. The 
question here is one which simply respects the frus- 
trating of a final purpose of the Almighty by an 
operation of nature. To suppose that he cannot 
prevent this is to deny his power; to suppose him 
inattentive to it is to suppose him indifferent to his 
own designs ; and to assume that he employs care 
to prevent it is to assume nothing greater, nothing 
in fact so great as many instances of control which 
are always occurring; as, for instance, the regu- 
lation of the proportion of the sexes in human 
births, which cannot be attributed to chance, but 
must either be referred to superintendence or to 
some original law. 

Thus these theories afford no relief to the only 
real difficulty involved in the doctrine, but leave 
the whole case still to be resolved into the al- 
mighty power of God. But they involve them- 
selves in the fatal objection that they are plainly 
in opposition to the doctrine of the Scriptures. 
For: 

i. There is no resurrection of the body on this 
hypothesis, because the germ, or stamina, can in 
no good sense be called "the body" If a finger, 
or even a limb, is not the body, much less can 
these minuter parts be entitled to this appellation. 



RESURRECTION, CORNER STONE 89 

2. There is, on these theories, no resurrection 
at all. For if the preserved part be a germ, and 
the analogy of germination be adopted, then we 
have no longer a resurrection from death, but a 
vegetation from a suspended principle of secret 
life. If the stamina of Leibnitz be contended for, 
then the body, into which the soul enters at the 
resurrection, with the exception of these minute 
stamina, is provided for it by the addition and ag- 
gregation of new matter, and we have a creation, 
not a resurrection. 

3. If bodies in either of these modes are to be 
framed for the soul by the addition of a large 
mass of new matter, the resurrection is made sub- 
stantially the same with the pagan notion of the 
metempsychosis; and if St. Paul at Athens 
preached not "Jesus and the resurrection," but 
Jesus and a transmigration into a new body, it will 
be difficult to account for his hearers scoffing at a 
doctrine which had received the sanction of sev- 
eral of their own philosophic authorities. 

Another objection to the resurrection of the 
body has been drawn from the changes of its 
substance during life. The answer to this is that, 
allowing a frequent and total change of the sub- 
stance of the body (which, however, is but a hy- 
pothesis) to take place, it affects not the doctrine 
of Scripture, which is that the body which is laid 
in the grave shall be raised up. But, then, we are 
told that if our bodies have in fact undergone 



90 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

successive changes during life, the bodies in 
which we have sinned or performed rewardable 
actions may not be, in many instances, the same 
bodies as those which will be actually rewarded 
or punished. We answer that rewards and pun- 
ishments have their relation to the body not so 
much as it is the subject, but the instrument of re- 
ward and punishment It is the soul only which 
perceives pain or pleasure, which suffers or enjoys, 
and is, therefore, the only rewardable subject. 
Were we, therefore, to admit such corporeal mu- 
tations as are assumed in this objection, they af- 
fect not the case of our accountability. The per- 
sonal identity or sameness of a rational being, as 
Mr. Locke has observed, consists in self-conscious- 
ness: u By this every one is to himself what he 
calls self, without considering whether that self 
be continued in the same or divers substances. It 
was by the same self, which reflects on an action 
done many years ago, that the action was per- 
formed." If there were indeed any weight in this 
objection, it would affect the proceedings of 
human criminal courts in all cases of offenses com- 
mitted at some distance of time ; but it contradicts 
the common sense because it contradicts the com- 
mon consciousness and experience of mankind. 



CHAPTER XIV 

RESURRECTION OF THE BODY COMPLETE 

Who for the first time saw the little pendant coffin in 
which the insect lay entombed would ever predict that in 
a few weeks, perhaps in a few days or hours, it would be- 
come one of the most elegant and active of winged insects? 
And who that contemplates with the mind of a philos- 
opher this curious transformation and knows that two 
years before the insect mounts into the air, even while 
it is living in water, it has the rudiment of wings, can 
deny that the body of a dead man may at some future 
period be again invested with vigor and activity and soar 
to regions for which some latent organization may have 
peculiarly fitted it? — Dr. Gregory. 

John Wesley, who has the undisputed pre- 
miership in the great Methodist movement, holds 
to the doctrine of the resurrection in an inflexible 
and scriptural way. In a sermon from the fif- 
teenth chapter of First Corinthians he says : 

The apostle, having in the beginning of this 
chapter firmly settled the truth of our Saviour's 
resurrection, adds: "Now if Christ be preached 
that he rose from the dead, how say some among 
you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" 
It cannot now any longer seem impossible to you 

91 



92 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

that God should raise the dead; since you have so 
plain an example of it in our Lord, who was dead 
and is alive; and the same power which raised 
Christ must also be able to quicken our immortal 
bodies. 

"But some man will say, How are the dead 
raised up? and with what body do they come?" 
How can these things be? How is it possible 
that these bodies should be raised again and 
joined to their several souls, which many thou- 
sands of years ago were either buried in the earth 
or swallowed up in the sea or devoured by fire? — - 
which have moldered into the finest dust, that 
dust scattered over the face of the earth, dis- 
persed as far as the heavens are wide — nay, which 
has undergone ten thousand changes, has fattened 
the earth, become the food of other creatures, and 
these again the food of other men? How is it 
possible that all these little parts, which made up 
the body of Abraham, should be again ranged 
together, and, unmixed with the dust of other 
bodies, be all placed in the same order and posture 
that they were before, so as to make up the very 
selfsame body which his soul at his death forsook? 
Ezekiel was indeed, in a vision, set down in a 
valley full of dry bones, "and he heard a noise, 
and behold a shaking, and the bones came to- 
gether, bone to his bone ; the sinews and the flesh 
came upon them, and the skin covered them above, 
and breath came into them, and they lived, and 



RESURRECTION COMPLETE 93 

stood upon their feet." This might be in a vision. 
But that all this, and much more, should in time 
come to pass; that our bones after they are 
crumbled into dust should really become living 
men; that all the little parts whereof our bodies 
were made should immediately, at a general sum* 
mons, meet again, and every one challenge and 
possess its own place, till at last the whole be 
perfectly rebuilt — that this, I say, should be done 
is so incredible a thing that we cannot so much as 
have any notion of it. And we may observe that 
the Gentiles were most displeased with this arti- 
cle of the Christian faith. It was one of the last 
things the heathens believed, and it is to this day 
the chief objection to Christianity. 

It may be proper to mention some of the rea- 
sons upon which this article of our faith is built. 

The plain notion of a resurrection requires that 
the selfsame body that died should rise again. 
Nothing can be said to be raised again but that 
very body that died. If God give to our souls 
at the last day a new body, this cannot be called 
the resurrection of our body, because that word 
plainly implies the fresh production of what was 
before. 

There are many places of Scripture that plainly 
declare it. St. Paul, in the fifty-third verse of this 
chapter, tells us that "This corruptible must put 
on incorruption, and this mortal must put on im- 
mortality." Now by this mortal and this corrupt!- 



94 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

ble can be meant only that body which we now 
carry about with us, and shall one day lay down 
in the dust. 

The mention which the Scripture makes of the 
places where the dead shall rise further shows 
that the same body which died shall rise. Thus 
we read in Daniel: "Those that sleep in the dust 
of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, 
and some to shame and everlasting contempt." 
And we may likewise observe that the very phrase 
of sleep and awake implies that when we rise 
again from the dead our bodies will be as much 
the same as they are when we awake from sleep. 
Thus again our Lord affirms: "The hour is com- 
ing in which all that are in the graves shall hear 
his voice and shall come forth; they that have 
done good to the resurrection of life, and they 
that have done evil to the resurrection of dam- 
nation." (John v. 28, 29.) Now if the same 
body do not rise again, what need is there of open- 
ing the graves at the end of the world? The 
graves can give up no bodies but those which were 
laid in them. If we were not to rise with the very 
same bodies that died, then they might rest for- 
ever. To this we need only add that of St. Paul : 
"The Lord shall change this vile body, that it 
may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." 
Now this vile body can be no other than that with 
which we are now clothed, which must be restored 
to life again. 



RESURRECTION COMPLETE 95 

That in all this there is nothing incredible or 
impossible, I shall show by proving these three 
things: (i) That it is possible for God to keep 
and preserve unmixed from all other bodies the 
particular dust into which our several bodies are 
dissolved, and can gather and join it again, how 
far soever dispersed asunder. (2) That God can 
form that dust so gathered together into the same 
body it was before. (3) That when he hath 
formed this body he can enliven it with the same 
soul that before inhabited it. 

1. God can distinguish and keep unmixed from 
all other bodies the particular dust into which our 
several bodies are dissolved, and can gather it to- 
gether and join it again, how far soever dispersed 
asunder. God is infinite both in knowledge and 
power. He knoweth the number of the stars, and 
calleth them all by their names; he can tell the 
number of the sands on the seashore ; and is it at 
all incredible that he should distinctly know the 
several particles of dust into which the bodies of 
men are moldered, and plainly discern to whom 
they belong and the various changes they have 
undergone? Why should it be thought strange 
that he, who at the first formed us, whose eyes 
saw our substance yet being imperfect, from 
whom we w r ere not hid when we were made in 
secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts 
of the earth, should know every part of our bod- 
ies and every particle of dust whereof we were 



96 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

composed? The artist knows every part of the 
watch which he frames; and if it should fall in 
pieces, and the various parts of it lie in the great- 
est disorder and confusion, yet he can soon gather 
them together and as easily distinguish one from 
another as if every one had its particular mark. 
He knows the use of each, and can readily give it 
its proper place and put them all exactly in the 
same figure and order they were before. And 
can we think that the Almighty Builder of the 
world, whose workmanship we are, does not know 
whereof we are made or is not acquainted with 
the several parts of which this earthly tabernacle 
is composed? All these lay in one vast heap at 
the creation till he separated them one from an- 
other and framed them into those distinct bodies 
whereof this beautiful world consists. And why 
may not the same power collect the ruins of our 
corrupted bodies and restore them to their former 
condition? All the parts into which men's bodies 
are dissolved, however they seem to us carelessly 
scattered over the face of the earth, are yet care- 
fully laid up by God's wise disposal till the day of 
the restoration of all things. They are preserved 
in the waters and fires, in the birds and beasts, 
till the last trumpet shall summon them to their 
former habitation. 

But say they: "It may sometimes happen that 
several men's bodies may consist of the selfsame 
matter. For the bodies of men are often de- 



RESURRECTION COMPLETE 97 

voured by other animals, which are eaten by other 
men. Nay, there are nations which feed upon 
human flesh; consequently they borrow a great 
part of their bodies from other men. And if 
that which was part of one man's body becomes 
afterwards part of another man's, how can both 
rise at the last day with the same bodies they had 
before?" To this it may easily be replied that a 
very small part of what is eaten turns to nourish- 
ment; the far greater part goes away according 
to the order of nature. So that it is not at all 
impossible for God, who watches over and gov- 
erns all this, so to order things that what is part 
of one man's body, though eaten by another, shall 
never turn to his nourishment; or if it does, that 
it shall wear off again, and sometime before his 
death be separated from him, so that it may re- 
main in a capacity of being restored at the last day 
to its former owner. 

2. God can form this dust, so gathered to- 
gether, into the same body it was before. And 
that it is possible all must own who believe that 
God made Adam out of the dust of the earth. 
Therefore the bodies of men being dust after 
death, it is no other than it was before; and the 
same power that at the first made it of dust may 
as easily remake it when it is turned into dust 
again. Nay, it is no more wonderful than the 
forming of a human body in the womb, which is 
a thing we have daily experience of, and is doubt- 



98 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

less as strange an instance of divine power as 
the resurrection of it can possibly be. And were 
it not so common a thing, we should be as hardly 
brought to think it possible that such a beautiful 
fabric as the body of man is, with nerves and 
bones, flesh and veins, blood, and the several other 
parts whereof it consists, should be formed, as we 
know it is, as now we are, that hereafter it should 
be rebuilt when it has been crumbled into dust. 
Had we only heard of the wonderful production 
of the bodies of men, we should have been as 
ready to ask: "How are men made, and with what 
bodies are they born?" as now, when we hear of 
the resurrection, "How are the dead raised up, 
and with what bodies do they come?" 

3. When God hath raised this body, he can 
enliven it with the same soul that inhabited it 
before. And this we cannot pretend to say is im- 
possible to be done, for it has been done already. 
Our Saviour himself was dead, rose again, and 
appeared alive to his disciples and others, who 
had lived with him many years, and were then 
fully convinced that he was the same person they 
had seen die upon the cross. 

Thus have I shown that the resurrection of the 
same body is by no means impossible to God. 
That which he hath promised he is able also to 
perform by that "mighty power by which he is 
able to subdue all things to himself." Though, 
therefore, we cannot exactly tell the manner how 



RESURRECTION COMPLETE 99 

it shall be done, yet this ought not in the least 
to weaken our belief of this important article of 
our faith. It is enough that he to whom all things 
are possible hath passed his word that he will 
raise us again. Let those who presume to mock 
at the glorious hope of all good men, and are 
constantly raising objections against it, first try 
their skill upon the various appearances of na- 
ture. Let them explain everything which they 
see happen in this world before they talk of the 
difficulties of explaining the resurrection. Can 
they tell me how their own bodies were fashioned 
and curiously wrought? Can they give me a plain 
account, by what orderly steps this glorious, 
stately structure, which discovers so much work- 
manship and rare contrivance, was at first cre- 
ated? How was the first drop of blood made, 
and how came the heart and veins and arteries to 
receive it? Of what and by what means were the 
nerves and fibers made? What fixed the little 
springs in their due places, and fitted them for 
the several uses for which they now serve? How 
was the brain distinguished from the other parts 
of the body and filled with spirits to move and 
animate the whole? How came the body to be 
fenced with bones and sinews, to be clothed with 
skin and flesh, distinguished into various muscles? 
Let them but answer these few questions about 
the mechanism of our own bodies, and I will 
answer all the difficulties concerning the resurrec- 



100 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

tion of them. But if they cannot do this without 
having recourse to the infinite power and wisdom 
of the First Cause, let them know that the same 
power and wisdom can reanimate it after it is 
turned into dust, and that there is no reason for 
our doubting concerning the thing because there 
are some circumstances belonging to it which we 
cannot perfectly comprehend or give a distinct ac- 
count of. 



CHAPTER XV 

wesley's argument for a resurrection and 
not a creation 

This he [Paul] calls the manifestation of the sons of 
God, alluding to children's being brought forth to the 
light when they are born. This was to have its highest 
fulfillment at the resurrection, when they shall be born 
from the grave. They themselves, therefore, join with 
the creation around them, groaning within themselves, 
waiting for the most glorious, the ultimate and perfect 
manifestation of the sons of God when they shall be born 
of the grave. — Rev. Jonathan Edwards. 

Then John Wesley shows the change between 
the qualities of the mortal and glorified bodies of 
God's saints. He says: 

The change which shall be made in our bodies 
at the resurrection, according to the Scripture ac- 
count, will consist chiefly in these four things : ( i ) 
That our bodies shall be raised immortal and in- 
corruptible. (2) That they shall be raised in 
glory. (3) That they shall be raised in power. 
(4) That they shall be raised spiritual bodies. 

1. The body that we shall have at the resur- 
rection shall be immortal and incorruptible: "For 

IOI 



102 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
mortal must put on immortality." Now these 
words "immortal" and "incorruptible" not only 
signify that we shall die no more (for in that 
sense the damned are immortal and incorrupti- 
ble), but that we shall be perfectly free from all 
the bodily evils which sin brought into the world. 
That our bodies shall not be subject to sickness 
or pain or any other inconveniences we are daily 
exposed to. This the Scripture calls "the redemp- 
tion of our bodies," the freeing them from all 
their maladies. Were we to receive them again, 
subject to all the frailties and miseries which we 
are forced to wrestle with, I much doubt whether 
a wise man, were he left to his choice, would will- 
ingly take his again — whether he would not choose 
to let his still lie rotting in the grave rather than 
to be again chained to such a cumbersome clod of 
earth. Such a resurrection would be, as a wise 
heathen calls it, "a resurrection to another sleep." 
It would look more like a redemption to death 
again than a resurrection to life. 

The best thing we can say of this house of 
earth is, That it is a ruinous building, and will 
not be long before it tumbles into dust ; that it is 
not our home (we look for another house eternal 
in the heavens) ; that we shall not always be con- 
fined here, but that in a little time we shall be de- 
livered from the bondage of corruption, from this 
burden of flesh, into the glorious liberty of the 



WESLEY'S ARGUMENT 103 

sons of God. What frail things these bodies of 
ours are! How soon are they disordered! To 
what a troop of diseases, pains, and other infirm- 
ities are they constantly subject! And how does 
the least distemper disturb our minds and make 
life itself a burden ! Of how many parts do our 
bodies consist! And if one of these be disor- 
dered, the whole man suffers. If but one of these 
slender threads whereof our flesh is made up be 
stretched beyond its due proportion, or fretted 
by any sharp humor, or broken, what torment 
does it create ! Nay, when our bodies are at the 
best, what pains do we take to answer their neces- 
sities, to provide for their sustenance, to preserve 
them in health, and to keep them tenantable, in 
some tolerable fitness for our soul's use. And 
what time we can spare from our labor is taken 
up in rest and refreshing our jaded bodies and 
fitting them for work again. How are we forced, 
even naturally, into the confines of death; even to 
cease to be; at least to pass so many hours with- 
out any useful or reasonable thoughts, merely to 
keep them in repair! But our hope and comfort 
are that we shall shortly be delivered from this 
burden of flesh, when "God shall wipe away all 
tears from our eyes, and there shall be no more 
death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall 
there be any more pain; for the former things are 
passed away." O when shall we arrive at that 
happy land where no complaints were ever heard, 



104 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

where we shall all enjoy uninterrupted health both 
of body and mind, and nevermore be exposed to 
any of those inconveniences that disturb our pres- 
ent pilgrimage? When we shall have once passed 
from death unto life, we shall be eased of all the 
troublesome care of our bodies, which now takes 
up so much of our time and thoughts. We shall 
be set free from all those mean and tiresome la- 
bors which we must now undergo to support our 
lives. Yon robes of light, with which we shall 
be clothed at the resurrection of the just, will not 
stand in need of those careful provisions which 
it is so troublesome to us here either to procure 
or to be without. But then, as our Lord tells us, 
those who shall be accounted worthy to obtain 
that world neither marry nor are given in mar- 
riage, neither can they die any more, but they are 
equal to the angels. Their bodies are neither 
subject to disease, nor want that daily sustenance 
which these mortal bodies cannot be without. 
"Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but 
God will destroy both it and them." This is that 
perfect happiness which all good men shall enjoy 
in the other world: a mind free from all trouble 
and guilt in a body free from all pains and dis- 
eases. Thus our mortal bodies shall be raised 
immortal. They shall not only be always pre- 
served from death (for so these might be, if God 
pleased), but the nature of them shall be wholly 



WESLEY'S ARGUMENT 105 

changed so that they shall not retain the same 
seeds of mortality: they cannot die any more. 

2. Our bodies shall be raised in glory. "Then 
shall the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom 
of their Father." A resemblance of this we have 
in the luster of Moses's face when he had con- 
versed with God on the mount. His face shone 
so bright that the children of Israel were afraid 
to come near him till he threw a veil over it. And 
that extraordinary majesty of Stephen's face 
seemed to be an earnest of his glory. "All that 
sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw 
his face as it had been the face of an angel." How 
then, if it shone so gloriously even on earth, will 
it shine in the other world, when his and the 
bodies of all the saints are made like unto Christ's 
glorious body ! How glorious the body of Christ 
is, we may guess from his transfiguration. St 
Peter, when he saw this, when our Lord's face 
shone as the sun and his raiment became shining 
and white as snow, was so transported with joy 
and admiration that he knew not what he said. 
When our Saviour discovered but a little of that 
glory which he now possesses, and which in due 
time he will impart to his followers, yet that little 
of it made the place seem a paradise; and the dis- 
ciples thought that they could wish for nothing 
better than always to live in such pure light and 
enjoy so beautiful a sight. "It is good for us to 
be here : let us make three tabernacles." Here let 



106 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

us fix our abode forever. And if they thought it 
so happy only to be present with such heavenly 
bodies and to behold them with their eyes, how 
much happier must it be to dwell in such glori- 
ous mansions and to be themselves clothed with 
so much brightness! 

This excellency of our heavenly bodies will 
probably arise in a great measure from the hap- 
piness of our souls. The unspeakable joy that we 
then shall feel will break through our bodies and 
shine forth in our countenances. As the joy of 
the soul even in this life has some influence upon 
the countenance, by rendering it more open and 
cheerful, so Solomon tells us : "A man's wisdom 
makes his face to shine." Virtue, as it refines 
a man's heart, so it makes his very looks more 
cheerful and lively. 

3. Our bodies shall be raised in power. This 
expresses the sprightliness of our heavenly bodies, 
the nimbleness of their motion, by which they shall 
be obedient and able instruments of the soul. In 
this state our bodies are no better than clogs and 
fetters, which confine and restrain the freedom 
of the soul. The corruptible body presses down 
the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weighs down 
the mind. Our dull, sluggish, inactive bodies are 
often unable, or backward, to obey the commands 
of the soul. But in the other life "they that 
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; 
they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they 



WESLEY'S ARGUMENT 107 

shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and 
not faint." Or, as another expresses it: "They 
shall run to and fro like sparks among the stub- 
ble." The speed of their motion shall be like that 
of devouring fire in stubble, and the height of 
it above the towering of an eagle; for they shall 
meet the Lord in the air, when he comes to judg- 
ment, and mount up with him into the highest 
heaven. This earthly body is slow and heavy in 
all its motions, listless, and soon tired with action. 
But our heavenly bodies shall be as fire, as active 
and as nimble as our thoughts are. 

4. Our bodies shall be raised spiritual bodies. 
Our spirits are now forced to serve our bodies 
and to attend their leisure, and do greatly depend 
upon them for most of their actions. But our 
bodies shall then wholly serve our spirits and 
minister to them and depend upon them. So that 
as by a natural body we understand one fitted for 
this lower, sensible world, for this earthly estate, 
so a spiritual body is one that is suited to a spirit- 
ual state, to an invisible world, to the life of 
angels. And, indeed, this is the principal differ- 
ence between a mortal and a glorified body. This 
flesh is the most dangerous enemy we have: we 
therefore deny and renounce it in our baptism. 
It constantly tempts us to evil. Every sense is 
a snare to us. All its lusts and appetites are in- 
ordinate. It is ungovernable, and often rebels 
against reason. The law in our members wars 



108 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

against the law of our mind. When the spirit is 
willing, the flesh is weak; so that the best of men 
are forced to keep it under and use it hardly lest 
it should betray them into folly and misery. And 
how does it hinder us in all our devotions 1 How 
soon does it jade our minds when employed on 
holy things ! How easily by its enchanting pleas- 
ures does it divert them from those noble exer- 
cises ! But when we have obtanied the resurrec- 
tion unto life, our bodies will be spiritualized, 
purified, and refined from their earthly grossness. 
Then they will be fit instruments for the soul in 
all its divine and heavenly employment; we shall 
not be weary of singing praises to God through 
infinite ages. 

Thus after what little we have been able to 
conceive of it, it sufficiently appears that a glori- 
fied body is infinitely more excellent and desirable 
than this vile body. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE CHRISTIAN'S BODY RAISED IMMORTAL AND 
INCORRUPTIBLE 

The resurrection of the dead must be admitted to be a 
great mystery which nothing but the occurrence of the fact 
can unfold. The apostle puts this question into the mouth 
of an infidel: "How are the dead raised up? and with 
what body do they come?" which he answers in a very un- 
ceremonious manner: "Thou fool, that which thou sowest 
is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, 
thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it 
may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God 
giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed 
his own body" The glorious prospect opened by this 
doctrine is not less animating because it surpasses our 
comprehension. On the contrary, its profundity only 
serves to increase our astonishment and enhance our grati- 
tude. The apostle, in his apology before Felix, resolves 
the whole into an immediate exertion of divine power. 
Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God 
should raise the dead? If indeed the gospel professed 
to teach the theory of the fact, it would be a just objection 
that this was beyond the grasp of our faculties. If, on 
the contrary, it merely reveals facts and those facts have 
immediate practical bearings on the hearts and lives of 
those who receive them, all objections on account of their 
mysteriousness are futile, because they proceed on the sup- 
position that God intends to develop the whole mystery, 

109 



110 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

whereas He discovers only so much as may be adapted to 
rectify the conscience and purify the heart. 

— Robert Hall. 



John Wesley concludes by practical infer- 
ences : 

I. From what has been said, we may learn 
the best way of preparing ourselves to live in 
those heavenly bodies, which is by cleansing our- 
selves more and more from all earthly affections, 
and weaning ourselves from this body and all the 
pleasures that are peculiar to it. We should begin 
in this life to loosen the knot between our souls 
and this mortal flesh ; to refine our affections, and 
raise them from things below to things above; 
to take ®ff our thoughts and disengage them from 
present and sensible things, and accustom our- 
selves to think of and converse with things future 
and invisible; that so our souls, when they leave 
this earthly body, may be prepared for a spiritual 
one, as having beforehand tasted spiritual delights 
and being in some degree acquainted with the 
things which we then shall meet with. A soul 
wholly taken up with this earthly body is not fit 
for the glorious mansions above. A sensual mind 
is so wedded to bodily pleasures that it cannot 
enjoy itself without them, and it is not able to 
relish any other, though infinitely to be preferred 
before them. Nay, such as follow the inclinations 
of their fleshly appetites are so far unfit for 



CHRISTIAN'S BODY IMMORTAL 111 

heavenly joys that they would esteem it the great- 
est unhappiness to be clothed with a spiritual 
body. It would be like clothing a beggar in the 
robes of a king. Such glorious bodies would be 
uneasy to them; they would not know what to do 
in them ; they would be glad to retire and put on 
their rags again. But when we are washed from 
the guilt of our sins, and cleansed from all filthi- 
ness of flesh and spirit, by faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, then we shall long to be dissolved and to 
be with our exalted Saviour. We shall be always 
ready to take wing for the other world, where 
we shall at last have a body suited to our spiritual 
appetites. 

2. From hence we may see how to account for 
the different degrees of glory in the heavenly 
world. For although all the children of God shall 
have glorious bodies, yet the glory of them all 
shall not be equal. "As one star differeth from 
another star in glory, so also is the resurrection 
of the dead." They shall all shine as stars, but 
those who, by a constant diligence in well-doing, 
have attained to a higher measure of purity than 
others shall shine more brightly than others. 
They shall appear as more glorious stars. It is 
certain that the most heavenly bodies will be given 
to the most heavenly souls; so that this is no little 
encouragement to us to make the greatest progress 
we possibly can in the knowledge and love of God, 
since the more we are weaned from the things 



112 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

of the earth now the more glorious will our bodies 
be at the resurrection. 

3, Let this consideration engage us patiently 
to bear whatever troubles we may be exercised 
with in the present life. The time of our eternal 
redemption draweth nigh. Let us hold out a 
little longer, and all tears shall be wiped from our 
eyes and we shall never sigh nor sorrow any more. 
And how soon shall we forget all we endured in 
this earthly tabernacle, when once we are clothed 
with that house which is from above? We are 
now but on our journey toward home, and so must 
expect to struggle with many difficulties; but it 
will not be long ere we come to our journey's 
end, and that will make amends for all. We shall 
then be in a quiet and safe harbor, out of the 
reach of all storms and dangers. We shall then 
be at home in our Father's house, no longer ex- 
posed to the inconveniences which, so long as we 
abide abroad in these tents, we are subject to. 
And let us not forfeit all this happiness for want 
of a little more patience. Only let us hold out 
to the end, and we shall receive an abundant 
recompense for all the trouble and uneasiness of 
our passage, which shall be endless rest and peace. 

Let this especially fortify us against the fear 
of death; it is now disarmed, and can do us no 
hurt. It divides us indeed from this body awhile, 
but it is only that we may receive it again more 
glorious. As God therefore said once to Jacob, 



CHRISTIAN'S BODY IMMORTAL 113 

"Fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will go 
down with thee, and will surely bring thee up 
again/' so I may say to all who are born of God, 
Fear not to go down into the grave: lay down 
your heads in the dust; for God will certainly 
bring you up again, and that in a much more glor- 
ious manner. Only "be ye steadfast and unmov- 
able, always abounding in the work of the Lord/' 
and then let death prevail over and pull down 
this house of clay; since God hath undertaken to 
rear it up again, infinitely more beautiful, strong 
and useful. 

We see how this apostle and founder of Meth- 
odism held to the Bible statement of this vital 
and fundamental fact. Had John Wesley held 
the fact of the resurrection of the body by a feeble 
or a lax tenure, then he would neither have been 
God's apostle nor the founder of Methodism. 
Wesleyan Methodism had not been if John 
Wesley had gingerly held this essential and indis- 
pensable fact dissolved and disemboweled by 
philosophical admixture and rationalistic dubiety. 
All this marvelous work would not have been, 
or gone glimmering — "A schoolboy's tale, the 
wonder of an hour;" "Like a tale told by an idiot; 
full of sound and fury signifying nothing." 

We have made these extracts from men of the 
highest order of intellect and culture of varied 
creeds of faith, yet essentially one. We see that 



114 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

they accepted the fact of the resurrection of the 
body as their gospel creed, maintained it despite 
all philosophical objections, and heartily ap- 
proved and advocated it. 

We would reemphasize the fact that there are 
no new arguments nor stronger ones against the 
resurrection of the body than those which the 
fathers had to confront, and they met them with 
resolute and strong faith, Why is this doctrine 
held so feebly and with so many qualifications by 
the Church of this day? There is no solution of 
this question to be found outside of the decay of 
that simple, spiritual, strong faith which domi- 
nated these men who made their times a great 
spiritual era. 

These men spent no time nor devices in devising 
methods to make it easy for God to seem to do 
what he had promised to do and yet not do it. 
By the modern popular process of tinkering and 
toning we get God out of the matter, and reduce 
the Christian system to a godless philosophy. A 
resurrection without God is the point to which 
modern progressive theology is moving. It is 
high time we had quit this toning down divine 
truth to answer the purposes of our unfaith and 
bad philosophy. This is a poor business for 
preachers or people to be at — this playing the 
role of philosophers, this dwarfing and destroying 
revelation to satisfy the limitations and blindness 
of reason. Let reason use all its sanctified powers 



CHRISTIAN'S BODY IMMORTAL 115 

in ascertaining what God says, in learning in 
silence, reverence, and meekness God's words — 
learn to obey revelation, but never to sit in judg- 
ment on its truth, its fitness, nor its facts. 



CHAPTER XVII 

SOME BODIES WILL SHINE MORE BRIGHTLY THAN 

OTHERS 

We may think, perchance, that we are free to speculate 
to prove historical credibilities, to boast the liberty of a sus- 
pended assent to what seems all too objective and material 
for the falsely spiritualizing tendencies of the age in which 
we live. We may think so now; but when the end draws 
near, when sorrow breaks us, when age weakens, when 
darkness begins to close around us, where will all such 
license of thought be and what will it avail us? 

— Bishop Ellicott. 

Amid the signs and transactions of the death 
and resurrection of Christ we have this statement : 
"And the graves were opened; and many bodies 
of the saints which slept arose, and came out of 
the graves after his resurrection, and went into 
the holy city, and appeared unto many." 

The graves were opened, the bodies that slept 
arose and came out of their graves. Nothing 
could be more explicit; nothing clearer than that 
this was a literal resurrection, a literal return to 
life of the bodies put in the grave. This is the 
first fruit of Christ's resurrection, the pledge and 
symbol of ours. 

116 



BODIES WILL SHINE 117 

Christ's resurrection was the great pattern of 
ours. He said to his disciples: "Behold, my 
hands and my feet, that it is I myself, handle me 
and see," He showed them his hands and side — 
a literal resurrection of his pierced, marred, and 
bleeding body. This is the earnest authority and 
hope of our resurrection. We are to be raised 
from the dead, not from a germ, for this is the 
fact paganized. It is not a rehabilitation, not a 
new creation, but a raising up again of the same 
thing which had fallen — raised and transfigured, 
refined, glorified, in conditions, relations, quali- 
ties. So also is the resurrection of the dead. 

Among the first indications of heresy, is that 
about the resurrection; our going off begins here- 
in Paul's masterly argument in Corinthians to 
refute these resurrection heretics, he sets forth 
the literal resurrection: the body sown in weak- 
ness, raised in power; the same body raised that 
is sown. The mortal — that is, the dead body — 
puts on immortality. The corruptible body puts 
on incorruption. 

The dead are to stand before God in judgment. 
We are to be judged for the deeds done in this 
body. This body is a partner in all our doing, and 
it must bear its share in the awards of that judg- 
ment day. Christ says soul and body can be cast 
by God into hell. The identity, the unity, and 
sameness follow through the history of eternity. 
These vile bodies are to be changed — not other 



118 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

bodies made, but these we bear and will put in 
the grave are to feel the regenerating and trans- 
forming force of the resurrection. 

Daniel says: "And many of them that sleep 
in the dust of the earth shall awake, and some to 
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlast- 
ing contempt." 

The sleepers are to come forth. It is the body 
that sleeps; the soul never sleeps. It is that which 
is sleeping in the dust of the earth which is to 
awake. The sleepers in the dust of the earth are 
to awake. The body only is sleeping in the dust 
of the earth. What could be more specific, direct, 
than this statement? 

Our Lord says: "Marvel not at this: for the 
hour is coming, in the which all that are in the 
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; 
they that have done good, unto the resurrection 
of life, and they that have done evil, unto the 
resurrection of damnation." 

Here the resurrection is coming out of the 
grave. What have we put in the grave ? These 
mortal bodies — and that which we put in the 
grave is to hear his voice and come out of the 
grave. 

Paul puts the doctrine in a wholesome form 
and very full of comfort: "But I would not have 
you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them 
which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as 
others which have no hope. For if we believe 



BODIES WILL SHINE 119 

that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also 
which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." 

No refining in this to meet the vicious philoso- 
phy of the day. No surrender to the higher 
rationalistic and Sadducean criticism. It is a 
brave and tender statement of a precious and 
divine truth. Who are sleeping in Christ? We 
know who! We folded their hands with tears 
and kissed the lips and laid them to sleep and 
wrote on their tombs the words of hope and res- 
urrection. We did not see their spirits and could 
not follow them in their heavenward flight, but 
we did bear their bodies, broken-hearted, and lay 
them to sleep and their forms are forever mir- 
rored on our hearts, and Christ shall bring them 
back to us out of their graves and out of their 
sleep to our embrace and to our hearts. 

We sang, as we laid them to sleep, "Asleep in 
Jesus." We put it on the marble that marked 
their bed of sleep: 

"Asleep in Jesus! Blessed sleep! 
From which none ever wakes to weep." 

It is out of the grave they are to come ! It is 
out of the dust they are to come! It is out of 
the sea they are to come! The body is in the 
grave, the body is in the dust, the body is in the 
sea. The body, imperishable as the spirit, shall 
by the voice of the Son of God come out of the 
grave, come out of the dust, come out of the sea. 



120 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

Glorious fact, mysterious fact; but God, God's 
Son, God's Word makes and solves its mystery. 
Faith holds to God, faith holds to God's Son, 
faith holds to God's Word. Faith, almighty 
faith, sees God, sees the Son of God, sees his 
word, laughs at mysteries and impossibilities, and 
cries: "It shall be done!" 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Christ's resurrection the pledge and symbol 

OF OURS 

Paul felt in the depths of his soul that the life of the 
Christian, as it subsists in faith now, can only subsist in 
hope of the future. Without this assumed view of the 
future, the whole Christian life appears in his eyes as en- 
deavors without an object, the pursuit of a phantom, the 
sport of a delusion. For the life of other men is directed 
to the higher or lower aims which are to be attained in 
intellectual pursuits, or in the gratification of the senses 
and which can be actually attained on earth. But the 
life of Christians, with all its conflicts, efforts, and re- 
nunciations, refers to an object that has no truth, if it be 
not realized in the eternal life of the future. 

— JOHANN A. W. NEANDER. 

It is obvious that this present body, not in sub- 
stance but in qualities and capacity, will not be 
suited to the changed and higher conditions and 
employments of the heavenly life. It may not be 
so obvious, but must be equally true that the rev- 
elation on this point, if made to us in detail, could 
not be understood, and so we have the facts stated 
in an explicit but general way, that these bodies 
are to be changed. The great outlines only are 
given. It is said with force that these bodies in 

121 



122 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

their present qualities will be entirely unsuited to 
the changed relations ; that flesh and blood cannot 
inherit that happy state nor meet its high de- 
mands. 

Speculations and theories, never satisfactory, 
are generally profitless in regard to these divine 
mysteries. The Bible is the only safe guide. We 
are not to seek after mysteries in God's Word, 
or marvels, but to search out and know the truth 
as revealed by God in its teaching without error, 
fancy, human opinion, or philosophy. God's truth 
is all we need to know. It is what we ought to 
want and earnestly and faithfully to seek. 

God reveals to us two distinct facts about his 
purposes with our bodies : The first is the raising 
of our bodies from the grave. The body is his 
in its original creation: he made it fearfully and 
wonderfully. This body is sacred to God; sacred 
to God by creation. God created these bodies. 
Out of common dust they were made, but the dust 
was sanctified and made holy for God's high pur- 
poses. The body is sacred to God, for it is his 
temple, as sacred and holier than any temple ever 
built to God: "Know ye not that your body is 
a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" 
The body dedicated as a temple is devoted to 
God. The body holy to God as a temple is holy. 
Our bodies are God's work, God's workmanship, 
God's temple, God's property. He owns these 
bodies; they are to glorify him and he will glorify 



PLEDGE AND SYMBOL 123 

them. The body is sacred to God because he 
clothed his Son in it. Jesus wore this body on 
earth, wears it now in heaven. The body shares 
in the work of the redemption by Jesus; its re- 
generation will come through its resurrection and 
glorious change. God sanctified and ennobled it 
by appearing in the body to patriarch and prophet. 
He gave it divine honor and clothed it with im- 
mortality when he clothed his Son in a body of 
flesh. He gave the body triumph when he raised 
it from the dead in the person of his Son. This 
body he has declared he will raise from the deadly 
ravages of the grave. The second great purpose 
God has in decree for the body is that it shall be 
so changed as to qualify it for and adapt it to all 
the highest enjoyments, employments, pursuits, 
and advantages of the heavenly life. 

This change so marvelous may be likened to 
the regeneration of our souls. The substance is 
not changed, the identity and sameness not de- 
stroyed, but a wonderful transformation has taken 
place in the conditions, relations, appetencies of 
the soul. The man is the same, and yet a new 
man; old things are passed away, and behold, all 
things are become new. This change which comes 
over the body may be likened to that which comes 
over the earth when the deadness and coldness of 
winter give way to the life, beauty, and warmth 
of spring; it seems a different world, so changed 
from glory to glory, and yet it is the same, but we 



124* THE INEFFABLE GLORY - 

see what God can work. The same God who 
works such regenerating wonders in the soul, such 
natural wonders in the transforming spring — this 
same God shall awake these dead bodies from 
the sleep and wreck of the grave and regenerate 
them into glories far more abiding and sublime 
than these which mark the changing spring. 
Amen ! So let it be ! 

We have no adequate idea of the change; 
imagination has scarcely a foundation on which 
to build, fancy must not be indulged. Our ordi- 
nary language and conceptions are tame and 
cannot rise to the height of this mysterious and 
thrilling fact. The Bible gives us the model and 
some outlines. The model is the glorious body of 
Christ. The model we have never seen. Its 
picture was shown to us on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, but we are blinded and stupefied by its 
glory. The outlines of this great change which 
is to come upon our bodies is given us in the 
fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians. We there 
learn that the change will make it a powerful 
body, not in the enlargement of size, but in the 
elements of force, endurance, energy. It will have 
neither inherent nor acquired tendency to decay; 
its vigor will be unimpaired, its energy never re- 
laxed. Corruption will put on incorruption. 
Death will be swallowed up in life. Dimness, 
dishonor, shame will be changed to glory. The 
change will be from a natural, earthly body to a 



PLEDGE AND SYMBOL 125 

spiritual, heavenly one. The body, so the Bible 
teaches us, will come out of the grave changed 
into immortal strength, never to know weariness, 
weakness, tears, decay, death, ready for the differ- 
ent and higher uses of the heavenly life. 

The change will not be by stages or progres- 
sions — no evolution in it — but in a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye, when the last trump shall 
sound. The change will be by the immediate 
power of God, distinct from the resurrection in 
fact and act, but scarcely in time. This is our 
faith : the resurrection of the body by the power 
of God. We live in this faith; we bury our dead 
by the light of this hope; shall fall asleep our- 
selves with this blissful hope as our winding shee*. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THIS CHANGED BODY WILL NEVER KNOW WEAK- 
NESS, TEARS OR DECAY 

We are informed that both Moses and Elijah appeared 
also in glory! — a glory somewhat similar •, we may suppose, 
though jar inferior, to that with which Christ was iitr 
vested, hike him, they were probably clothed in raiment 
of unusual whiteness and splendor; and the form of their 
countenances might also be changed to something brighter 
and more illustrious. Now this would be a just represen- 
tation of the glorified state of saints in heaven. Par- 
ticular attestation was given on the mount to two of its 
principal doctrines: a general resurrection and a day of 
retribution. — Bishop Porteus. 

The change will not be in material substance 
nor shape. Christ was of the same form, shape, 
and substance after his resurrection as before, 
but refined, glorified. The marvelous change is 
based simply on the power of God, who, out of 
the same substance and material, can make so 
many diverse things. Many most serious, perni- 
cious errors have had their origin in the failure 
to discriminate between the two — the resurrection 
of the body and its miraculous change. The 
error among some Corinthians about the doctrine 

126 



NO WEAKNESS, TEARS, DECAY 127 

of the resurrection seems to be the modern idea 
that this body, earthly, dull, low, and fleshly in its 
nature and appetencies, was thereby unfitted for 
the heavenly life, and would not be raised. The 
Bible comes in and says it will be changed and 
refined in substance — not new, but changed to 
meet changed conditions. The husband builds a 
house ample and well fitted to his uses when first 
married, family small; but when the family en- 
larges and conditions change, with ample means 
he does not build a new house, but out of the sub- 
stance and material of the old he changes his 
home. 

Paul avers God's ability to change the body by 
referring to nature in seed-sowing. The farmer 
in his wheat sows a bare grain; God is able to 
take that grain of wheat and so alter it that it 
comes out in a blade and stalk — the body that 
God chooses to give it. Then God takes the sub- 
stance — flesh, mere flesh — and he changes some 
of it into the highest order of flesh, flesh of men; 
then he changes the same substance into a coarser 
fabric, flesh of beasts, another flesh of fishes, and 
another part he fashions flesh of birds — showing 
God's power to endlessly diversify the same sub- 
stance. Then God's ability extends to make out 
of the same material heavenly bodies for heavenly 
uses, and earthly bodies for earthly uses. Not 
only does God's illimitable power extend to di- 
versifying the same flesh into various kinds, not 



128 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

only does his power enable him to make out of 
the same substance bodies for low earthly uses 
and also for high heavenly uses ; but the power by 
which he can diversify and make the same sub- 
stance diverse in its glory, like the sun, moon, and 
stars, all the same in substance and form but 
different in glory by God's power. So the argu- 
ment that God can change the elements and ma- 
terial of this body make it all glorious. So he re- 
plies to the heterodox Corinthian who in the spirit 
of unfaith asked: "How are the dead raised 
up? and with what body do they come?" Raised 
up, says Paul, by the power of God, and changed, 
says Paul, to fit the demands of the resurrection 
life. 

We have the distinct and luminous statement 
in Philippians : "For our citizenship is in heaven ; 
from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord 
Jesus Christ : who shall fashion anew the body of 
our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the 
body of his glory, according to the working where- 
by he is able even to subject all things unto him- 
self." 

The time of the change will be at the second 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. "For the Lord 
himself shall descend from heaven, with the voice 
of the archangel and with the trump of God: and 
the dead in Christ shall rise first." And he (the 
Lord Jesus Christ) will fashion anew this body 
of our humiliation — the old body. The pattern 



NO WEAKNESS, TEARS, DECAY 129 

of new fashioning of our bodies will be his own 
glorious body, nothing higher, nothing richer, 
nothing diviner, nothing more beautiful than the 
glorified body of Jesus. We have in the trans- 
figuration of Jesus a glance at his glorious body. 
As Trench says: "The transfiguration has ever 
been contemplated in the Church as a prophecy 
of the glory which the saints shall have in the 
resurrection. As was the body of Christ on the 
mount, so hereafter shall their bodies be. In pas- 
sages out of number we have hints of the luminous 
character of the future glorified bodies of the 
redeemed. All these scriptures pointing to the 
glorious conformity of their bodies then, with all 
which his body at this time was, who now showed 
in himself as the first fruits of the new creation 
what hereafter he would show in all them that 
were his." How luminous his body the night of 
the transfiguration ! They describe it : "His face 
did shine as the sun, his garments became white 
as the light." "His garments became glistering, 
exceeding white; so as no fuller on earth can 
whiten them." "And as he was praying, the 
fashion of his countenance was altered, and his 
raiment became white and dazzling." Glory was 
there! Moses and Elijah appeared in glory. 

The pattern after which our resurrection will 
be found is the glorified body of Christ. This is 
not only hinted at, but distinctly asserted in the 
Bible: "And so it is written, The first man, 



130 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam was 
made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not 
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; 
and afterwards that which is spiritual. The first 
man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is 
the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such 
are they also that are earthy; and as is the heav- 
enly, such are they also that are heavenly. And 
as we have borne the image of the earthy, we 
shall also bear the image of the heavenly." 



CHAPTER XX 

AND AS WE HAVE BORNE THE IMAGE OF THE 

EARTHY, WE SHALL ALSO BEAR THE 

IMAGE OF THE HEAVENLY 

How shall dust and ashes hope to ascend into the heaven 
of heavens if it cannot feel with alt the fullness of con- 
viction that One who was bone of our bone and flesh of 
our flesh has entered those realms before us and has taken 
up our very nature glorified and beautified to the right 
hand of the Everlasting Father? — Bishop Ellicott. 

The Bible declares that these bodies are to be 
changed, not other bodies made or developed; 
but these vile bodies, the earthly bodies which 
belonged to us, the bodies of our humiliation, 
shame, and weakness, are to be changed and fash- 
ioned into the form of Christ's glorious body. 
It was Christ's same body, the body pierced and 
dead on the cross, the body which slept in Joseph's 
tomb that was made glorious. So it is to be our 
same body — the body which had suffered the 
humiliation — that is to share the glory. It is to 
be accomplished by his divine power, and at his 
second coming. 

This change will follow, in point of time, im- 

131 



132 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

mediately after the resurrection. The change will 
not be secured by the gracious effects of the genial 
clime nor advanced by the slow stages of progress. 
It will be instantaneous, the immediate act of 
God's creative and regenerating power. 

This will be the hour of our final triumph; the 
last enemy, Death, will be destroyed, and no 
traces of the ravages of death nor the ruin of sin 
will be left. Then we will have proof of the cor- 
rectness of the apostle's figuring and its results: 
"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present 
time are not worthy to be compared with the 
glory which shall be revealed in us." 

Then will be realized the transmuting power 
of God — how the dull and dreary things of this 
life can be changed to jeweled brightness; how its 
light afflictions, which pressed so wearily and 
heavily upon us, have been working for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
Then we shall not see through this earthy glass 
darkly, but face to face, with full and unveiled 
vision; then, in the fullness of knowledge as well 
as light, we shall know even as we are known. 
Then we will realize how here, even with the high- 
est spiritual vision, eye did not see, nor ear hear, 
neither did it enter into the heart of man to con- 
ceive of things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him. 

These are the two glorious facts awaiting these 
bodies — *hese bodies broken and imprisoned even 



IMAGE OF THE HEAVENLY 133 

in this life and humbled into death and dust. 
They are to be raised from the dead, the long 
sleep of death is to be broken by the power of 
God when the archangel's trump shall sound; but 
it also teaches that the body thus raised shall 
undergo a change to fit it for its glorious resur- 
rection life. Paul declares to us that this change 
shall consist of several particulars, which shall 
distinguish it from and contrast it with the pres- 
ent body, described by him thus : "It is sown in 
corruption ; it is raised in incorruption." Changed 
from corruption to incorruption. Our bodies now 
are wasted, wasted by sickness, wasted by age, 
wasted by care, wasted by toil. All, everything, 
mark it as corruptible — its beauty fades, its 
strength decays, its life grows feeble and feebler. 
Our heavenly bodies will not be subject to decay 
nor to the weakness of age; they will not be the 
heirs of sickness or death; by them 



"Sickness and sorrow, pain and death 
Will be felt and feared no more.*' 



Sorrow and the labors of this earthly life break 
and mar the force of this body and it wastes away. 
Our resurrection body will not be affected by any 
of these. 

"It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory." 
Dishonor, ignominy, disgrace, the grave, the dirt, 
the rottenness. We bury our dead out of our 



134 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

sight, dishonored, lost to sight, surrendered to 
darkness, loneliness, silence, to rottenness, worms, 
and to earth, to ashes, to dust. 

These bodies are dim and dishonored things, 
bodies of humiliation, shame, and suffering; they 
arrest the full flow of joy and check the rapture 
of the immortal spirit. The transformation which 
they will undergo will make them glorious, shining 
with a splendor which outvies the sun. Doubtless 
they will be luminous and attractive, shapely with 
symmetry and perfect in form, lustrous with an 
immortal life, radiant with its deathless charms. 

Do we overstate the change: Raised in glory? 
Glory, magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dig- 
nity, grace, splendor, brightness — these all, each, 
are in it. Christ said of them : u They shall shine 
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." 
"They- that be wise shall shine as the brightness 
of the firmament; and they that turn many to 
righteousness as the stars forever and ever." 



CHAPTER XXI 

OUR BODIES CHANGED INSTANTANEOUSLY AT 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 

/ rejoice in the glory to be revealed, for it is no un- 
certain glory we look for. Our hope is not hung upon 
such an untwisted thread as I imagine so, or it is likely, 
but the cable of the strong tow of our fastened anchor is 
the oath and promise of Him who is eternal verity. Our 
salvation is fastened with God's own hand, with Christ's 
own strength, to the strong strap of God's unchangeable 
nature. 

Let us be ballasted with grace that we be not blown 
over and that we stagger not. I never believed till now 
that there was so much to be found in Christ on this 
side of death and heaven. How sweet, how sweet is our 
investment! — Samuel Rutherford. 

"It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power." 
Our bodies in their present form are feeble. Their 
history is sown in weakness, frailty is the essential 
quality, their greatest vigor is dashed in a mo- 
ment's disease, its manliest strength goes down to 
childish feebleness in a day and sinks helpless and 
nerveless into the grave — born to weakness, as 
well as to sorrow, as the sparks fly upward. The 
resurrection change will be into power. Energy 

135 



136 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

will be one of its predominant features then, as 
weakness is now — energy, deathless energy; en- 
ergy unimpaired by labor, by clime, by sickness, 
or death; energy without restraint or diminution, 
energy tireless in its pursuits. Exhaustless in its 
flow of life and spirits, it will need no rest to 
repair, no sleep to refresh, no recreation to re- 
cover waste; it will feel no faintness nor fatigue 
by the strongest pressure, severest tension, and 
most engaging employments. They will serve 
God day and night, as the outflow of a vigor which 
is sustained without pain or weariness through all 
the midday hours of that nightless land. 

Weariness, weakness, waste are here. The 
heavenly bodies will be strength unabated, vigor 
unworn, life unweakened; no age to its youth, no 
sickness to its health, no fatigue to its toil, no 
night to its day. Energy unabated, power un- 
limited, strength unimpaired, vigor unweakened — 
these will characterize our heavenly bodies. 

"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spir- 
itual body." Natural, our present bodies are 
akin to the brutes and in common with them — 
subject to appetite and passion, not actuated by 
the higher part of our being. The spiritual body 
will be lifted above appetite, passion, fitted for the 
uses and as the vehicle of the immortal part of 
man which is akin to God, and all its being, uses, 
and employment must be after God's high and 
heavenly designs. These bodies of ours in their 



SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 137 

present form are natural bodies, fitted for our 
present uses, but low and fleshly in their tastes and 
tendencies. They are but dragged unwillingly 
into the regions of the spiritual and heavenly; they 
are truly of the earth earthy — "vile bodies" they 
are called in the Epistle to the Philippians. The 
change will fit them for heavenly and spiritual 
uses; they will be the fitting agents for the 
changed, high, happy sphere into which the resur- 
rection life has introduced them. The fittest 
organs they will be for heavenly activities and 
heavenly engagements. These earthborn and 
earth-habituated bodies translated to heaven with- 
out change would be unfit for the engagements 
of that world, bewildered by its brightness, ap- 
palled by its sleepless labors. Smitten and over- 
powered by its ecstatic visions, they could not bear 
the strain of that life; they could not engage in 
its worship nor meet the duties of one hour of 
heavenly demands. Its change will fit it for the 
exchange of weakness for strength, sickness for 
health, life for death, and mortality for immor- 
tality, earth for heaven. 

The apostle begins this fifteenth chapter of 
First Corinthians to refute errors about the doc- 
trine of the resurrection, but carries it on by put- 
ting the doctrine in its true and sublime attitude, 
and closes with a lofty and triumphant strain: 
"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual 
body. So also it is written, The first man, Adam, 



138 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

became a living soul. The last Adam became a 
life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which 
is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that 
which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, 
earthy: the second man is of heaven. As is the 
earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as 
is the heavenly, such are they also that are heav- 
enly. And as we have borne the image of the 
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heav- 
enly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither 
doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I 
tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we 
shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling 
of an eye, at the last trump : for the trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, 
and we shall be changed. For this corruptible 
must put on incorruption, and this mortal must 
put on immortality. But when this corruptible 
shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal 
shall have put on immortality, then shall come to 
pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed 
up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O 
grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death 
is sin; and the power of sin is the law: but thanks 
be to God, which giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore, my beloved 
brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always 
abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch 



SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 139 

as ye know that your labor is not vain in the 
Lord." 

Here the apostle includes in this great change 
those who are living when Christ shall come. 
Though they do not die, they will be changed — 
that is, those who are Christ's. In a moment, 
quicker than thought, the work will be wrought; 
the change not in substance but in quality. At 
that time, the bodies of the dead in every particle 
rescued from the grave and changed to incorrup- 
tion, the triumph will be complete. Then, and 
not till then, our rapturous and victorious song 
will be sung, and the prophecy fulfilled. 



CHAPTER XXII 

WEARINESS, WASTE, WEAKNESS HERE DEATH- 
LESS ENERGY THERE 

Figuratively speaking, when Christ slipped down from 
the cross j He descended first "into the lower parts of 
the earth" and came into the kingdom of death. With 
one stroke of His mighty sword He cut away the turrets 
and foundations of death's temple. With another sweep 
of that terrible scimetar He broke death's scepter ', smashed 
his crown, captured his keys, then plunging through the 
ashes of damnation and lunging on the gates of hell, tore 
them from their sockets, cutting the bars of iron in pieces 
and ascending the throne of his imperial majesty the devil, 
He hurled him into the burning marl and sulphurous flame, 
then placing His right foot upon the neck of the devil and 
His left upon the jaws of death, He lifted his hand to 
heaven and shouted through the gloom of eternal night 
"I am He that liveth and was dead; and behold I am 
alive forevermore and have the keys of death and hell." 
And in a moment more with Satan chained to one 
chariot wheel and death to the other, He drove up the 
steeps of Hades leading captivity captive while heaven s 
hosts peering over the battlemented walls of jasper 
shouted in raptured choruses, "He hath prevailed, He hath 
prevailed; He shall not fail, He shall not fail!' Emerging 
at a point called Joseph's Tomb and remaining forty days 
with his friends He after this ascended into heaven "from 
whence we look for the Saviour: the Lord Jesus Christ: 
who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned 

140 



DEATHLESS ENERGY THERE 141 

like unto His glorious body, according to the working 
whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." 

— Rev. Homer W. Hodge. 

The future of man will be divinely glorious 
and divinely illustrious. He is to share the place 
of Jesus, where Jesus and his followers are to be. 
This is the specific teaching of Jesus. "I go to 
prepare a place for you," said Jesus; "and if I 
go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and 
will receive you unto myself; that where I am, 
there ye may be also!' In his sacerdotal prayer 
Jesus said: "Father, that which thou hast given 
me, I will that, where I am, they also may be with 
me; that they may behold my glory, which thou 
hast given me." The statement in the Apocalypse 
is very exalted, very strong, and very clear: "He 
that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down 
with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat 
down with my Father in his throne." 

Jesus must have the place of greatest dignity, 
of highest honor in the universe. God has 
awarded this to him without question or limita- 
tion — a name above every name, a place above 
every place. Jesus calls it paradise, a place of 
ineffable beauty, God-adorned and exuberant in 
its divine embellishments — untold beauty to fas- 
cinate the eye and ravish and intoxicate the heart. 
The divine word is that Jesus will shepherd all 
the blessed flock of that thrice-blessed land. With 
them Jesus will be, and for them Jesus will be. 



142 THE INEFFABLE GLORY 

The honor, dignity, power, and glory bestowed 
on him will be theirs. They are joint heirs with 
him of all God's most generous inheritance. Rich 
indeed, surpassing rich, shall be the saints in that 
large, exhaustless, immortal store. 

"I am fully persuaded of this as of a most 
necessary and infallible truth: that as it is ap- 
pointed unto all men once to die, so it is de- 
termined that all men shall rise from death, that 
the souls separated from our bodies are in the 
hands of God and live, that the bodies dissolved 
into dust or scattered into ashes shall be recol- 
lected in themselves and reunited to their souls, 
that the same flesh which lived before shall be 
revived, that the same numerical bodies which 
did fall shall rise, that this resuscitation shall be 
universal, no man excepted, no flesh left in the 
grave, that all the just shall be raised to a resur- 
rection of life, and all the unjust to a resurrection 
of damnation; that this shall be performed at the 
last day when the trump shall sound, and this I 
believe the resurrection of the body." 

With what acclamations with saints, rising 
from the dead, applaud the Redeemer! How will 
the heaven of heavens resound his praises for- 
ever! "Thanks be to God" will be the burden of 
their song; and angels will join in the chorus and 
declare their consent with a loud Amen ! Halle- 
lujah! 

THE END 



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